French Christmas

#Reverb11: A Letter From Your Future Self

For today, I dug into the archives of #Reverb10 for the prompt that I felt had the biggest impact on me in 2011. It was this one:

Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead?

So here is a love letter received today, postmarked December 31, 2016:

Noël,

Keep walking towards me.

I know your grip on this year is tight. Which we both know is funny, since it was more rife with cyclones and avalanches that any year in recent memory. But seriously, drop that rose in the river, the thorns are tearing up your fingers. You can watch and send it a blessing as it floats by into the past.

Then turn around. Put one foot in front of the other. I won’t lie to you; you are a ways away from me. If I had to estimate, I’d say you’re at mile 7. But don’t think about the distance; that’s where the mind games creep in. Think about your foot on the pavement. Think about how good it feels to run. Think about the gifts the landscape gives you as you pass by: the smell of rain, a field of sunflowers, a patch of shade.

Be not in fear, be in amazement. I will be waiting on the porch when you get here.

PS 2011: Thank you for your many gifts.

Happy New Year, everyone!

#Reverb11: Tapas (Heat)

What stoked your creative fire this year? What did your discipline enable you to achieve and/or create?

My creative blocks had been there for a long time, so long that the ivy tumbled down and almost covered the walls. For several years I paced and circled, looking for the entrance. My fingers traced along the outline of each brick. I tapped with my chisel. I searched for a weakness, any looseness or crumbling in the mortar.

Just when I started to grow truly tired of my own tentativeness, the tools I had with me were stripped away. It seemed completely impossible now, but I grew so wild in my solitude and desperation that I crouched down like a dog, sunk my hands into the Earth and began to dig.

And when I finally stood up, wet-faced and dripping, I was waist deep in the mud, realizing I could dig my way to the other side.

Both the prompt and the blog badge for today are via: http://yogafreedom2010.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/reverb11-starts-tomorrow/

#Reverb11: Drishti (Seeing)

What is your vision for your spiritual practice in 2012? How do you see yourself achieving it?

Mother Nature wastes not one thing. Not a fragrant citrus peel or a dry December leaf. She turns them over into a snack for a newborn monarch or a stitch in a bluebird’s simple nest.  

This year I will also waste nothing. I will practice seeing my emotional run off before it evaporates, the heat produced by change that rises from my body like shimmering waves from summer asphalt.

I will collect both the tears and the sweat and use them to water the garden.

Both the prompt and the blog badge for today are via: http://yogafreedom2010.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/reverb11-starts-tomorrow/

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you and yours! Here are some of my favorite photos of the season that express today better than my words ever could. :)

Once again, I caught the Santa el on the way home from work.

The big tree at the Christkindelmart.

Painted holiday windows.

Ice Santa on Southport.

#Reverb11 15: Memory

What do you hope to remember?

Night came on fast as I drove East on the Winter Sostice, the shortest day of the year. On the long stretch of highway that connects my past and my present, it dropped down on me like a curtain and I was reminded that in 2011, I had lots of time to wander around in my own darkness. I had lots of time to sit in silence. And I learned how to call upon the light even when everything else seemed ensconced in shadows.

I picked today's prompt from Kaileen Elise's website. I really needed a prompt that would help me remember yesterday and poof--there it was!

Gifts of light from my downstairs neighbors.

#Reverb11: Nourishment

Where did you eat?

My palate has changed; I will not eat your anger anymore. I will not choke down the gristle and bone you serve me. I will not swallow and pretend that I like how it feels, sliding down my throat.

I have a taste for something different. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be off in the forest, hunting for truffles.

Prompt via http://www.kaileenelise.com/2011/11/30/lets-reverb-2011//. I think I jumped the shark and did this one a little out of order … but does that matter so much this year? Also, the blog bodge is from here.

#Reverb11: 12 Things

What are 12 things your life doesn’t need in 2012? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 12 things change your life? (Props to original Author: Sam Davidson)  If you did Reverb10, how are you making out on your 11 Things from last year?

My list of 11 wasn’t so much a roster of items to cart off to Goodwill, it was a pirate’s map of treasures to find. So I dropped into the icy waters of 2011 like a free diver, breath locked up tightly in my chest as I felt with my toes for the rocky bottom.

I met some strange and prehistoric looking creatures down there, while I slowly picked through the tangle of seaweed and coral and barnacles. I plan on keeping each thing I found in 2012. And I’ll hold tight to the last thing I retrieved from way down there in the deep, a misshapen but lovely little pearl.

(In case you were wondering, it was number one on my #Reverb11 list, my first piece of fiction since high school. It’s kind of awkward and awful, actually, rather like a toddler who is learning how to walk and has a nasty bruise on her forward from face planting into the coffee table. But she is learning, and she is mine.)

If got this prompt via Geekin’ Hard and Everlasting Present (which is also where I got the awesome blog badge.)

Reverb11: Jnana (Self-knowledge)

Name something you did that was completely out of character. How did it feel? 

Our lives can become like landscapes, familiar and predictable. Rolling hills or sharp mountains or uneasy, jagged terrain. And we, being evolutionary creatures, we adapt to them, we bend and twist ourselves to them like windswept poplars on the edge of a seaside cliff.

We bend because sometimes life becomes a series of things that were done to us, a particular habitat we were born into and from which we feel we cannot break free.

This was not a year that things were done to me. I hiked out, up to the top. With the wind blowing at my back, I took a match from my pocket. I struck it against the flint. I saw the flame burst forth like a flower and I felt a terrible rising giddiness, a maniacal glee.

I burned the forest down.

Both the prompt and the blog badge for today are via: http://yogafreedom2010.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/reverb11-starts-tomorrow/

#Reverb 11: Story

What label/story/box/belief clipped your wings this year? How can you flip the script in 2012? What’s your new story?

The great loves of our lives don’t spend their existence categorized and separated into neat little boxes. Instead they march in together, in one cacophonous roar, all the strings and harmonies of the symphony playing at once.

You cannot unbraid the strand. If something in your heart is aching, it will inevitably spread its sickness to the adjoining chambers. For a long time I knew this, and yet I let the story of heartsickness loom large, too difficult and complicated to unravel.

This year I tugged the end of the string, expecting the knot to tighten and become more tangled. Instead I unleashed a flock of balloons skyward. 

This #Reverb11 prompt is from Fabeku Fatunmise. I found it via @meganecollier. The blog badge is via Robin, aka @Zumbalicious_, thanks lady!

#Reverb11: Who did you meet?

We’ve had a lot of one-sided conversations this year. Lots of conversations where I cried and begged and said things that made me my clap my hand over my mouth after they burst forth, because I was so shocked to hear them vibrating into existence, with such certainty, right in front of me.

It didn’t seem exactly right, me spilling my guts while he remained pretty silent and unknown. So of course I Google-stalked him. I out found that he always carries a book. And also that he speaks Greek. And also that his father was allegedly murdered.

Those things known, I learned the most about us both when he revealed himself in unspoken ways. (In this excellent diagram of the Hero’s Journey, these would be the points labeled “supernatural aid” or “helper.”) This is also the part of this post when you realize I’m sounding a little wackadoo, and that’s ok. Because really, call me crazy or not, there are symbols and instances that appear when you ask for them that are just too poignant to be of this world. They are too serendipitous to be anything less than a big, giant sign from those guiding you that says "HEY YOU, it's time to pay attention."

This year I learned to absorb these moments, despite my clumsy and often ham-fisted attempts to dissect them. I learned to bring this faith into my circle of beliefs, which if it siddled up to the circle of beliefs of my church, would resemble something like a Venn diagram with a small overlap in the middle.

But in that sweet spot of intersection I found him. The idea of a connectedness with all of those on the other side makes sense to me. And having a patron saint to call on, well. That’s sort of like having your own personal superhero in your back pocket.   

Yes, I really do have a St. Jude magnet on my fridge. Prompt via Kaileenelise.com.