Have you ever created something, left it and come back only to be jerked into "wow, what is tha... oh. that is mine!"
It happened to me last week with a painting. Here is an image of it, but it doesn't capture the vibe that drew me into the "wow"...
This morning I was drawn into art I created three years ago and art I created yesterday and I find myself needing, desiring, hoping to somehow synthesize it for you.
Or perhaps that is better stated as begin to synthesize this all for you.
Two days ago I took an essay I wrote five years ago and I wove it into a writing lesson for my And Now You Write program, which, by the way, you may still join. This dynamic community has three more weeks to write together yet and your participation would be phenomenal.
There is even a video component to this lesson. I facilitated the lesson yesterday morning and yesterday mid-morning I wrote the prompt in my journal and took a little "field trip".
The writing prompt was... "The secret of my life is..." and here is what I wrote, straight from my pencil:
The secret of my life is I hang out a lot with divinity. Perhaps this is why I rarely get lonely.
I started practicing this early, maybe in my languageless companionship with John. Like today "go under the bridge" I "hear" like I had earlier "heard" to turn the car around and fetch a chair before I left home so that I would be comfortable once I went under the bridge. Once I agreed, "ok, I am going all ready!"
It is relentless, sometimes, the divine nudging, cajoling, nagging so most of the time I just walk alongside it and follow what it says.
Today the divine brought me into one of my favorite spots to write. A loud silent place, under a bridge, graffiti on the walls. I love it. I can't hear a thing there except the sound of flow. I see in my notebook where I wrote, "Come write with me you crazy person, write!" I suppose that was divinity saying, "Write this into an essay, Julie! Write it I dare you!" so here, I sit and I do.
I remember when I discovered this place. I was grieving in stacks. Layers upon layers of grief and silence and absence and aloneness so sparse I almost lost my words. Back then, in fact, for a time, prayer was all I wrote. I lost my will to write peppy and perky and businessy and how-to. I became grief, I allowed it to find the still places in my body and to work me. People dropped like flies and I stayed. Silent. Praying. Waiting. Listening. More people left.
I looked at a photo I took then and compared it to a photo I took yesterday and the contrast startled me. It pummelled me with the truth of how it felt, then. It lifted me up with the truth of how I feel now.
I felt grateful for the gap in between the photos and all the work that has taken place in between. I have learned life isn't the best when it "feels" the best, necessarily. I have learned life is the best when loved as it is. Completely. Without wishing it to be any different than it is, but relishing the gaps instead as THIS IS WHAT IS and being grateful for exactly what is without the need to change it unless it is a soulful, inspired choice you are making - not a choice to fix anything that is perceived as wrong. The gaps in life are not inherently wrong. They are places to play and pray and be and move and create and love.
I have had a gap in publishing Daily Passion Activator. The world hasn't stopped spinning. And now, I am ready to be back. The gap has served me as a teacher. I am grateful to be back up and publishing again. I just needed to step away and didn't even realize I needed to step away.
Just like those two faces of me above are different, these moments are different too.
I smile knowing this place may have remained undiscovered if I hadn't been left alone to pray, to become grief, to allow it to work through me without shhhussshing it out too quickly.
When I was under the bridge yesterday with the water flowing I realized some people would label this little slice of heaven "smelly." Never, I say. Interesting smell. Sort of like decomposition and nature, changing form from one to another. I watch the trees sway above me and I realize I can't hear the leaves with all this flow around me. I call the sound of leaves in the wind 'God sounds' since so often I hear the divine in the rustling leaves.
Today I exchanged one version of God sounds for another. Sometimes we hear divinity differently.
Under this bridge I can't hear the Sheriff's firing range that was bothering me while I was above this spot. I watch as a leaf offers itself to the river and a blue dragonfly investigates the trees and settles on a large grey rock so I can see the dragonfly actually has a red body and its wings are blue. I look up and see some of last year's leaves freckling the green leaves and branches of a large tree above me.
I see a spider web bridging the river, too, echoing this spot where I am sitting.
Later, the web seems to have disappeared, playing a silent game of peek-a-boo with my pen.
I thought I was seeing destruction. I wasn't. I just needed to perceive from a different angle.
I stop to pause, noting my fingers first wrote a wrong word: angel. They meant ANGLE, as in moved differently to see a different perception.
"Now you see me, now you don't!" giggles the angelic spider web, so delicate yet so hardy.
The secret of my life is I can write volumes without noticing, without needing to converse with any humans, just me and the insects, the water, the leaves and that grand blue heron (or perhaps some family of egret) gracefully outstretching her wings and gliding up river from me when my arms lifted too fast and she lost trust in me.
I wrote that line and felt, when I noticed I started to hear cars on the bridge, its time to turn. Time to go home. Time to see what is next there.
Time to celebrate and be with whatever is and let it be just that.
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