What comes to me when I read your "I know. . . ." is that to say this is to step back for a moment from the taken-for-granted self and world and to look and ask. And then to say, Yes, I know . . . who I am, where I am, and so on.
Then there's that one "I don't know" that may be the most important "know" of them all because it opens the field of self a little wider to the world.
It's great to "see you" here, Michael. Thank you for commenting!
My dear fellow traveler, Renée, Here you open the door marked private and let some of your struggles show, hopefully to find they have aged and grown weaker and lost their fangs. I hope you discover that you left a lot back there in the Arctic that did not need to travel all the way with you. I’m happy that you had your retreat and happy that you will soon be home with lighter luggage.
I am ever grateful to you, fellow traveler, for your traveling companionship (and literary leads!) these miles, especially since the Arctic.
Opening the door marked private: yes. How delicate the dance of personal disclosure for the writer--may it always be on behalf of the reader. Hopefully, it rings tones of resonance here.
Perhaps because I met you after you were well into your journey, I missed the part that this journey was, in part, motivated by a loss of partnership. Few losses are as destabilizing. Maybe now, more than ever, as a species, we seem to define ourselves by what we are in relationship with (which I think is a beautiful thing). For me, sometimes when those relationships change, like a change of scenery, I can flow easily into the next version of self. And sometimes an abrupt and huge change in relationship utterly obliterates, shatters my self as I had known it. Through reading your posts, as well as the books you have guided me to, I am learning to come into loving relationship with tension itself as the creative force of life. I am so grateful for you, Renee, and look forward to many more Sundays of Beyond the Comfort Zone. ♥️♥️♥️
"Maybe now, more than ever, as a species, we seem to define ourselves by what we are in relationship with. . . ." I wonder if you are intimating that we are becoming more aware of our intrinsic relationality, as if it's dawning on us, and so, "defining" us. Is there more here that you are pointing at?
And if we are waking up to our intrinsic relationality, does the fact of this awareness "obliterate . . . self as I had known it"? I have changed the meaning of your comment, even as I resonate.
You also write: "I am learning to come into loving relationship with tension itself as a creative force of life." Yes. (I am hesitant to put forth any more than that echo, which is resounding.)
Dear Renee, what began as a chance connection now feels like putting on a familiar scarf and wrapping myself in the comfort and warmth. Although I have not travelled the physical distance I have felt the stretch of perception, of knowledge, of courage and bravery mirrored back to me with each step. When we experience the loss and separation of what we had created in partnership, we are also gifted with the opportunity to bring ourselves back home. And here you are having done just that.
We are reconnecting on a level that will take time to comprehend as each action we take now becomes your action and the next persons and the next. To be able to express this as you have is a beautiful pause in contemplation and I am walking those corridors in silence with you. I look forward to the next chapter. Go well.
Walking head and heart into our shared becoming, we are both One and learning alone. Your words in this essay have left me speechless and I will go over each sentence with a contemplative mind and heart.
Wishing you a gentle re-entry filled with joy, peace and love💗
"Walking head and heart into our shared becoming. . . ."
What comes to me is an image of the two of us walking around the lake near your home in your lovely little town in British Columbia where we met, and there, we recognized one another, "our shared becoming," and there, a friendship was birthed.
Ever grateful that our paths have crossed, and for your well-wishes,
Renée; You have moved many people by sharing the intimacies of your life. What a blessing for you and all of us. I just want to thank you for all of it. I love being engaged with you this way. In a way you've never really left; I've been traveling along with you. I must admit though that I am thrilled to be able to actually see you again in the flesh. Nothing quite substitutes for that. So, welcome home pilgrim. Hugs and lots of love await your arrival. One more poem from my "friend" Mary Oliver, to welcome you home: "Truly there are mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of lambs; how rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising; how two hands touch and the bond will never be broken; how some come from delight or scars of damage to the comfort of a poem. Let me keep my distance always from those who think they know the answers, and let me keep company always with those who say, "look!" and laugh with astonishment, and bow their heads." I love keeping company with you Renée.
Yes, dear friend, you have been with me every mile, 🙏 and our dialogues have continued, only on the page, not in the kitchen. It will be JOY to see you!
"Let me keep my distance always from those who think they know the answers, and let me keep company always with those who say, 'look!' and laugh with astonishment, and bow their heads."
I was drawn to your title “Beyond the Comfort Zone” as well as for being introduced to your sojourn through the remote regions of Alaska. Your inspired and challenging rumination seemed to align with the work I have been doing in Francis Weller’s weekly Convivium on “Facing the World with Soul”.
And then this posting and the challenges of our “Dark Nights of the Soul” and this dialog we have with ourselves about “not knowing.” I was hooked -- all in now.
My wife passed away suddenly in the predawn darkness on October 30th, 2019. We slept in our living room that night -- she in her hospital bed and I, in my recliner. Our home is a small post and beam and converted hunting cabin on forested property in the hilltowns of western Massachusetts.
I watched her take her last breath. In that moment everything I knew about my world had vanished. Time was suspended -- my state of being had been catapulted into this tremendous void and I recognized nothing accept a deep, painful longing that would never be satiated again (or so I thought at the time).
So when I read “I would stay there forever”, I thought, as tears streamed down my face, “Yes, Yes! -- that is me.
And when I read “I would have received my final breath under that roof”, I said, “Yes, Barbara did, and I will too, someday. (My wife is buried between a break in a stone wall about 100 yards back in the forest behind our home.)
I have lived in solitude and alone in the quiet of this forest made sacred over these past four years. A sacredness discovered in the hollows of a broken open heart and a sorrow that has built a foundation on the grace and beauty that the world has come to offer me.
On the night of Barbara’s death, I recall roaming our dirt road in confusion and despair, eyes transfixed on the multitude of stars in a clear dark sky above. Crying and then mumbling and then shouting, arms stretched straight above: “I don’t understand THIS -- not now, not now. But some day I will.”
Thank you, Renee, for the inspiration and for being another kindred soul.
Thank you for your heart full of sincerity onto this page. You have borne your soul with us and through the deep hollows and "wild edge of sorrow" (Weller). Permit me to say even though it is four years hence, I am terribly sorry for your loss, Mark. Time doesn't matter in this regard. And while I do not know your own deeply personal lived experience and pain, I can sense into it and the utter despair and confusion on the night that Barbara died and surely in the hours and days and months following. There is no loss comparable.
I gather you walked into the searing pain of losing Barbara with Francis Weller by your side, holding your hand and helping you heal your heart.
We come to something when we let sorrow and yearning touch the marrow of our being. We cannot say what that something is for each of us, because it is uniquely ours to meet, but we are met there and with care. Here it is in your words:
"A sacredness discovered in the hollows of a broken open heart and a sorrow that has built a foundation on the grace and beauty that the world has come to offer me."
"But some day I will."
It is an honor to read you words. You show us something. I thank you for this.
Renee, Thank you for your generous and kind words. Yes, we do “come to something when we let sorrow and yearning touch the marrow of our being.” So much of loss and sorrow becomes this ongoing dance with mystery and possibility. A life once lived where mystery was to be solved or minimized and discarded. These years it has become the cornerstone, the essence of my existence. Many times I have found myself enraptured by my sorrow in such a way that my very being felt like I was being stretched and allowed to almost touch the very edge of the eternal. This enriched state would leave me gasping for air and convinced that I had been in the presence of the divine. Just as clearly I also knew that my soul had been touched by all the mystery of the world. Dare I say that I had experienced a fleeting glimpse of the Holy Spirit? And of course the hunger, the hunger....
Not too long ago I had gone to bed and found myself struggling to fall asleep. I thought: Oh, no -- another night of fractured sleep followed by a day of exhaustion. The next thing I remember is feeling a gentle caress of air against my body. Right away I intuited these great wings slowly moving inches away from my prone body. And that these wings were the embodied presence of my wife. Had I fallen asleep and was I dreaming? Was I awake and now refusing to open my eyes less this enchanting encounter dissolve away? The next thing I remember was waking in the early morning hours and that I had slept peacefully through the night
Welcome home, Renee -- to your “house of belonging.” So too defined by place and forest and field and watershed and sky. I have worked hard over these past months to make the adjustment from a house of without to a reinvention of the 3rd Body that Barbara and I had with each other in her lifetime. And I am so ever blessed.
Thank you for what you have shared. To anyone who comes to this page and reads your comments, you have extended an exquisite gift of hope and of mercy.
You have shown that when sorrow 'breaks' us and we stay with it as a companion, suffering with heart the exquisite anguish of loss and its double, the angst of yearning, the sorrow and the yearning liberate us--into Mystery, into reverie, into mystical encounter (and freedom from space-time dimensionality). And more, we avail ourselves to help from and communion with other realms. We touch and are touched by the eternal. 3rd Body becomes an 'abler soul' that transcends space-time and is a living presence . . . always. Form is no longer the necessity of living loving with an Other but the force that found the two and united you--eternally.
Thank you for sharing your blessings with us. And thank you for welcoming me home.
"If we’re lucky, a dark night wakes us down to our marrow and births us anew. It does so for us as individuals. It does so for us all. It would be hard to deny that what some call the metacrisis3 of this time is a dark night for humanity." These few lines resonated (among others) with me.
November has been filled (to overflowing) with an unexpected invitation to deeper growth, compassion and humility. Today, I was able to catch my breath-the first time this month, and these words reminded me that it all belongs. Thank you.
Also, a retreat with Cynthia B. that sounds amazing. I really appreciate her work and wisdom.
Thank you for sharing how this post surfaced your own recent "unexpected invitation to deeper growth, compassion and humility" and *that it all belongs.* Welcome. Welcome.
I'm glad on your behalf that you have been able to catch your breath and see. May the coming days give you a bit more reprieve for your own inner seeing.
I echo your appreciation for Cynthia's work and wisdom. She is a beacon.
(I have missed Smaller & Deeper recently and will be back soon! I so appreciate your work, Amy.)
I have joined this journey late, but reading this letter, now, I understand better your need for soul, heart and body rehabilitation. These fragments of our lives, those that debilitate us utterly, disable and disconnect us from the every day demand our undivided concentration to heal and recover... you undertook this flight as your broken self, nevertheless willing... but you will end as a whole collective force, becoming stronger and stronger with the gathering. Self given to self as openly as to others...
With love Renée - it is my deep pleasure to have found you, malgré l’heure.. x
Your timing was perfect, and your words about the undivided concentration to heal and recover are wisdom itself. We give little credence in the West to the inner quest for healing and what true healing asks of us, inclined instead toward a fix that pushes us through and suppresses the very impulse to become again whole. The bond between healing and wholeness (as a word bond and in life itself) cannot be broken. In this way, "self given to self as openly to others. . ."
It is with such gratitude that our paths have crossed, Susie. Immense thank you for your loving comments always.
Thank you Renee; I resonate in so many ways with this post, and it came at just the right time. I also agree with you that "It would be hard to deny that what some call the metacrisis³ of this time is a dark night for humanity."
Universal patterns that I'm paying attention to for navigating this time, all in relation to the larger Pattern of Creativity: Synchronicity, Order/Chaos polarity, Structural Complexity, Uniqueness of exchanges and relations, Emergence, Spontaneity, and Autopoiesis.
P.S. I'm sad to have missed out on the retreat with Cynthia Bourgeault - I wish I had known!
I so appreciate your reflection on universal patterns you are paying attention to at this time. You show us that we can look to the "larger Pattern of Creativity" for cues. We see in these patterns the desire to be, the inclination to unfold in ever more novel ways, to self-organize with and toward the grandeur of the whole, and the intrinsic nature of becoming. We are supported. . . .
I will try to announce Cynthia Bourgeault retreats as word comes out in the future!
Thank you for sharing from your heart and soul as always. These journeys of soul awakening are so precious. We learn to live in the present not knowing what any day will bring or sometimes where the day will take us as you have so vividly portrayed on these pages. Here’s to the wonder of being in the moment and the not knowing.
"These journeys of soul awakening are so precious. . . . Here's to the wonder of being in the moment and the not knowing."
Soul awakening and not knowing . . . an intertwining that needs quiet our over-reliance on the activities of thought and let something more subtle (heart) let the soul shine through. I am going to paraphrase John O'Donahue poorly, but the reflection comes to mind apropos your reflection: "The soul is shy. Best not to cast a neon light upon it." (Very poorly paraphrased!) The rational mind can be a blinding (neon) light on the soul.
Thank you for the warm welcome home. Appalachy is in my view!
I know who I am
I know where I am
I know where I want to go
I don’t know how I will get there
Thanks Renee
Michael,
What comes to me when I read your "I know. . . ." is that to say this is to step back for a moment from the taken-for-granted self and world and to look and ask. And then to say, Yes, I know . . . who I am, where I am, and so on.
Then there's that one "I don't know" that may be the most important "know" of them all because it opens the field of self a little wider to the world.
It's great to "see you" here, Michael. Thank you for commenting!
Renée
My dear fellow traveler, Renée, Here you open the door marked private and let some of your struggles show, hopefully to find they have aged and grown weaker and lost their fangs. I hope you discover that you left a lot back there in the Arctic that did not need to travel all the way with you. I’m happy that you had your retreat and happy that you will soon be home with lighter luggage.
Dear Tara,
I am ever grateful to you, fellow traveler, for your traveling companionship (and literary leads!) these miles, especially since the Arctic.
Opening the door marked private: yes. How delicate the dance of personal disclosure for the writer--may it always be on behalf of the reader. Hopefully, it rings tones of resonance here.
In such gratitude that our paths have crossed,
Renée
Perhaps because I met you after you were well into your journey, I missed the part that this journey was, in part, motivated by a loss of partnership. Few losses are as destabilizing. Maybe now, more than ever, as a species, we seem to define ourselves by what we are in relationship with (which I think is a beautiful thing). For me, sometimes when those relationships change, like a change of scenery, I can flow easily into the next version of self. And sometimes an abrupt and huge change in relationship utterly obliterates, shatters my self as I had known it. Through reading your posts, as well as the books you have guided me to, I am learning to come into loving relationship with tension itself as the creative force of life. I am so grateful for you, Renee, and look forward to many more Sundays of Beyond the Comfort Zone. ♥️♥️♥️
Dear Jenna,
I am especially struck by two statements here.
"Maybe now, more than ever, as a species, we seem to define ourselves by what we are in relationship with. . . ." I wonder if you are intimating that we are becoming more aware of our intrinsic relationality, as if it's dawning on us, and so, "defining" us. Is there more here that you are pointing at?
And if we are waking up to our intrinsic relationality, does the fact of this awareness "obliterate . . . self as I had known it"? I have changed the meaning of your comment, even as I resonate.
You also write: "I am learning to come into loving relationship with tension itself as a creative force of life." Yes. (I am hesitant to put forth any more than that echo, which is resounding.)
Jenna, I am as grateful for you. Truly,
Renée
Dear Renee, what began as a chance connection now feels like putting on a familiar scarf and wrapping myself in the comfort and warmth. Although I have not travelled the physical distance I have felt the stretch of perception, of knowledge, of courage and bravery mirrored back to me with each step. When we experience the loss and separation of what we had created in partnership, we are also gifted with the opportunity to bring ourselves back home. And here you are having done just that.
We are reconnecting on a level that will take time to comprehend as each action we take now becomes your action and the next persons and the next. To be able to express this as you have is a beautiful pause in contemplation and I am walking those corridors in silence with you. I look forward to the next chapter. Go well.
Louise x
Louise,
Your always loving words bring me to a pause today, and I am inclined to let that pause linger in "those corridors of silence with you."
Thank you, dear friend, across the Great Pond,
Renée
Walking head and heart into our shared becoming, we are both One and learning alone. Your words in this essay have left me speechless and I will go over each sentence with a contemplative mind and heart.
Wishing you a gentle re-entry filled with joy, peace and love💗
Dear Donna,
"Walking head and heart into our shared becoming. . . ."
What comes to me is an image of the two of us walking around the lake near your home in your lovely little town in British Columbia where we met, and there, we recognized one another, "our shared becoming," and there, a friendship was birthed.
Ever grateful that our paths have crossed, and for your well-wishes,
Renée
Renée; You have moved many people by sharing the intimacies of your life. What a blessing for you and all of us. I just want to thank you for all of it. I love being engaged with you this way. In a way you've never really left; I've been traveling along with you. I must admit though that I am thrilled to be able to actually see you again in the flesh. Nothing quite substitutes for that. So, welcome home pilgrim. Hugs and lots of love await your arrival. One more poem from my "friend" Mary Oliver, to welcome you home: "Truly there are mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of lambs; how rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising; how two hands touch and the bond will never be broken; how some come from delight or scars of damage to the comfort of a poem. Let me keep my distance always from those who think they know the answers, and let me keep company always with those who say, "look!" and laugh with astonishment, and bow their heads." I love keeping company with you Renée.
Ed,
Yes, dear friend, you have been with me every mile, 🙏 and our dialogues have continued, only on the page, not in the kitchen. It will be JOY to see you!
"Let me keep my distance always from those who think they know the answers, and let me keep company always with those who say, 'look!' and laugh with astonishment, and bow their heads."
I love keeping company with you, Ed.
See you soon!
Renée
Hi Renee, I guess it’s time for me to respond.
I was drawn to your title “Beyond the Comfort Zone” as well as for being introduced to your sojourn through the remote regions of Alaska. Your inspired and challenging rumination seemed to align with the work I have been doing in Francis Weller’s weekly Convivium on “Facing the World with Soul”.
And then this posting and the challenges of our “Dark Nights of the Soul” and this dialog we have with ourselves about “not knowing.” I was hooked -- all in now.
My wife passed away suddenly in the predawn darkness on October 30th, 2019. We slept in our living room that night -- she in her hospital bed and I, in my recliner. Our home is a small post and beam and converted hunting cabin on forested property in the hilltowns of western Massachusetts.
I watched her take her last breath. In that moment everything I knew about my world had vanished. Time was suspended -- my state of being had been catapulted into this tremendous void and I recognized nothing accept a deep, painful longing that would never be satiated again (or so I thought at the time).
So when I read “I would stay there forever”, I thought, as tears streamed down my face, “Yes, Yes! -- that is me.
And when I read “I would have received my final breath under that roof”, I said, “Yes, Barbara did, and I will too, someday. (My wife is buried between a break in a stone wall about 100 yards back in the forest behind our home.)
I have lived in solitude and alone in the quiet of this forest made sacred over these past four years. A sacredness discovered in the hollows of a broken open heart and a sorrow that has built a foundation on the grace and beauty that the world has come to offer me.
On the night of Barbara’s death, I recall roaming our dirt road in confusion and despair, eyes transfixed on the multitude of stars in a clear dark sky above. Crying and then mumbling and then shouting, arms stretched straight above: “I don’t understand THIS -- not now, not now. But some day I will.”
Thank you, Renee, for the inspiration and for being another kindred soul.
Dear Mark,
Thank you for your heart full of sincerity onto this page. You have borne your soul with us and through the deep hollows and "wild edge of sorrow" (Weller). Permit me to say even though it is four years hence, I am terribly sorry for your loss, Mark. Time doesn't matter in this regard. And while I do not know your own deeply personal lived experience and pain, I can sense into it and the utter despair and confusion on the night that Barbara died and surely in the hours and days and months following. There is no loss comparable.
I gather you walked into the searing pain of losing Barbara with Francis Weller by your side, holding your hand and helping you heal your heart.
We come to something when we let sorrow and yearning touch the marrow of our being. We cannot say what that something is for each of us, because it is uniquely ours to meet, but we are met there and with care. Here it is in your words:
"A sacredness discovered in the hollows of a broken open heart and a sorrow that has built a foundation on the grace and beauty that the world has come to offer me."
"But some day I will."
It is an honor to read you words. You show us something. I thank you for this.
Yes, we are kindred, and I'm glad you're here.
With love,
Renée
Renee, Thank you for your generous and kind words. Yes, we do “come to something when we let sorrow and yearning touch the marrow of our being.” So much of loss and sorrow becomes this ongoing dance with mystery and possibility. A life once lived where mystery was to be solved or minimized and discarded. These years it has become the cornerstone, the essence of my existence. Many times I have found myself enraptured by my sorrow in such a way that my very being felt like I was being stretched and allowed to almost touch the very edge of the eternal. This enriched state would leave me gasping for air and convinced that I had been in the presence of the divine. Just as clearly I also knew that my soul had been touched by all the mystery of the world. Dare I say that I had experienced a fleeting glimpse of the Holy Spirit? And of course the hunger, the hunger....
Not too long ago I had gone to bed and found myself struggling to fall asleep. I thought: Oh, no -- another night of fractured sleep followed by a day of exhaustion. The next thing I remember is feeling a gentle caress of air against my body. Right away I intuited these great wings slowly moving inches away from my prone body. And that these wings were the embodied presence of my wife. Had I fallen asleep and was I dreaming? Was I awake and now refusing to open my eyes less this enchanting encounter dissolve away? The next thing I remember was waking in the early morning hours and that I had slept peacefully through the night
Welcome home, Renee -- to your “house of belonging.” So too defined by place and forest and field and watershed and sky. I have worked hard over these past months to make the adjustment from a house of without to a reinvention of the 3rd Body that Barbara and I had with each other in her lifetime. And I am so ever blessed.
Peace, Mark
Mark,
Thank you for what you have shared. To anyone who comes to this page and reads your comments, you have extended an exquisite gift of hope and of mercy.
You have shown that when sorrow 'breaks' us and we stay with it as a companion, suffering with heart the exquisite anguish of loss and its double, the angst of yearning, the sorrow and the yearning liberate us--into Mystery, into reverie, into mystical encounter (and freedom from space-time dimensionality). And more, we avail ourselves to help from and communion with other realms. We touch and are touched by the eternal. 3rd Body becomes an 'abler soul' that transcends space-time and is a living presence . . . always. Form is no longer the necessity of living loving with an Other but the force that found the two and united you--eternally.
Thank you for sharing your blessings with us. And thank you for welcoming me home.
With love,
Renée
Your writing is so poetic and meaningful.
"If we’re lucky, a dark night wakes us down to our marrow and births us anew. It does so for us as individuals. It does so for us all. It would be hard to deny that what some call the metacrisis3 of this time is a dark night for humanity." These few lines resonated (among others) with me.
November has been filled (to overflowing) with an unexpected invitation to deeper growth, compassion and humility. Today, I was able to catch my breath-the first time this month, and these words reminded me that it all belongs. Thank you.
Also, a retreat with Cynthia B. that sounds amazing. I really appreciate her work and wisdom.
Amy,
Thank you for sharing how this post surfaced your own recent "unexpected invitation to deeper growth, compassion and humility" and *that it all belongs.* Welcome. Welcome.
I'm glad on your behalf that you have been able to catch your breath and see. May the coming days give you a bit more reprieve for your own inner seeing.
I echo your appreciation for Cynthia's work and wisdom. She is a beacon.
(I have missed Smaller & Deeper recently and will be back soon! I so appreciate your work, Amy.)
Thank you for being here,
Renée
I have joined this journey late, but reading this letter, now, I understand better your need for soul, heart and body rehabilitation. These fragments of our lives, those that debilitate us utterly, disable and disconnect us from the every day demand our undivided concentration to heal and recover... you undertook this flight as your broken self, nevertheless willing... but you will end as a whole collective force, becoming stronger and stronger with the gathering. Self given to self as openly as to others...
With love Renée - it is my deep pleasure to have found you, malgré l’heure.. x
Susie,
Your timing was perfect, and your words about the undivided concentration to heal and recover are wisdom itself. We give little credence in the West to the inner quest for healing and what true healing asks of us, inclined instead toward a fix that pushes us through and suppresses the very impulse to become again whole. The bond between healing and wholeness (as a word bond and in life itself) cannot be broken. In this way, "self given to self as openly to others. . ."
It is with such gratitude that our paths have crossed, Susie. Immense thank you for your loving comments always.
With love,
Renée
Thank you
Brenda,
Thank *you*.
Warmest,
Renée
Thank you Renee; I resonate in so many ways with this post, and it came at just the right time. I also agree with you that "It would be hard to deny that what some call the metacrisis³ of this time is a dark night for humanity."
Universal patterns that I'm paying attention to for navigating this time, all in relation to the larger Pattern of Creativity: Synchronicity, Order/Chaos polarity, Structural Complexity, Uniqueness of exchanges and relations, Emergence, Spontaneity, and Autopoiesis.
P.S. I'm sad to have missed out on the retreat with Cynthia Bourgeault - I wish I had known!
David,
I so appreciate your reflection on universal patterns you are paying attention to at this time. You show us that we can look to the "larger Pattern of Creativity" for cues. We see in these patterns the desire to be, the inclination to unfold in ever more novel ways, to self-organize with and toward the grandeur of the whole, and the intrinsic nature of becoming. We are supported. . . .
I will try to announce Cynthia Bourgeault retreats as word comes out in the future!
Also, mailing list: www.cynthiabourgeault.org. Also: www.wisdomwaypoints.org
It's good to see you here.
Immense thanks,
Renée
Thank you for sharing from your heart and soul as always. These journeys of soul awakening are so precious. We learn to live in the present not knowing what any day will bring or sometimes where the day will take us as you have so vividly portrayed on these pages. Here’s to the wonder of being in the moment and the not knowing.
Welcome home.
Erma,
"These journeys of soul awakening are so precious. . . . Here's to the wonder of being in the moment and the not knowing."
Soul awakening and not knowing . . . an intertwining that needs quiet our over-reliance on the activities of thought and let something more subtle (heart) let the soul shine through. I am going to paraphrase John O'Donahue poorly, but the reflection comes to mind apropos your reflection: "The soul is shy. Best not to cast a neon light upon it." (Very poorly paraphrased!) The rational mind can be a blinding (neon) light on the soul.
Thank you for the warm welcome home. Appalachy is in my view!
Always love it when your words drop by,
Renée