Sunday, February 25, 2018

Showing Up

I took a long walk on the dyke as this sunny but cold day ended.  

I find solo walks very contemplative and my heart and mind were very full today as the rays of sun glinted off the leftover snow as I walked along the dyke - greeting friends, listening to the dusk bird chorus and breathing in the fresh breeze.

I was preoccupied with the unpredictability of life - the good and the bad, the magical and the sorrowful, the joyful and the challenging.  All the moments, big and small that we are all experiencing as we live these lives we have been given. 

I think to live wholeheartedly we are to embrace all the moments.

So much easier said than done. 

Perhaps the perspective of middle age allows me to start to rail less against the hard things, the desperately sad and unjust things and to accept them for what they have to teach me, show me about myself and others.

I wish I could say I did this with good grace all the time.... but alas. 

I didn't give anything up for Lent this year.

Instead I decided to redouble my efforts to show kindness.

I decided to show up more for my family and friends and for those in the ever expanding circles out from there - even when it's awkward or hard or when I doubt myself.  A message, a what's app, a text, a note,  an email, a walk, lunch, a coffee, ice cream- touching base, checking in, connecting.  Not to solve anyone's problems but to just show up and say "hello".

We need each other friends to keep on going, to see ourselves more clearly, to not drown in loneliness, to be brave together in a world that seems completely unpredictable most of the time. 



Thursday, February 1, 2018

One Little Word - 2018 Edition

This is it - February 1, the start of my new year, and my choice of word to be guided by in 2018 took until midway through my workout last night to show up.

Amazing what one thinks of while doing lateral lunges.

So here it is.... 

Lucky the last two years words were COURAGE and BRAVE if I am to tackle TRUTH



I don't know that I have a fully formed idea of what it is about TRUTH that compels me to be a student of it in 2018 but I do know that it is a deeply held value of mine.  It is a precious thing and so easily distorted and obscured. 

These are days of "fake news" and "#Metoo" and the death of net neutrality and algorithms that determine my newsfeed and internet searches.

Has the truth ever been more elusive?




My perpetual quest to be a person of integrity means I strive to both speak and live the truth as I understand it.  And isn't that just the thing.... as I see it, as I understand it... We live in an age of relativism having rejected absolutism for the dangerous and arrogant places it drives us to.

But this relativism leaves truth in murky water, on shaky ground.  I am all for considering multiple perspectives but I am also all for calling BS.  Nicely, of course. 


So I will try to seek truth, speak truth and live truth.  I will call out lies when encountered and falsehood when I am sure of it.  

But I suspect the hardest thing will be accepting the truth...about myself.  



I am still so enslaved to the negative voices in my head, so addicted to comparison and so unable to see myself as others do.   I try to outrun those thoughts and messages I send myself but I am determined to face myself, the truth of my heart and mind and body (ugh body too?) and show up in my life and in the lives of those I love and know and lead and walk through life alongside.



I will speak truth kindly when I need to
I will shout truth loudly if convicted to 
I will listen to truth (even about myself) when it is spoken to me

(PS - One Small Word had its genesis HERE and it is my 8th year of doing it - for some of my past one little word's click HERE for 2011 - 2015)

Disrupted

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