CENTER

| Anne Williamson | 

By the time anyone reads this blog post, I’ll have a new baby at home. She’ll only be a few weeks old. How will I feel? Perhaps lovely… baby is relatively easy, toddler is adjusting well, the “feel good” hormones are rolling, friends and family are near and welcome. Life is good. Or, maybe, I’ll feel awful… utterly exhausted by a colicky baby and distraught toddler, isolated and intentionally isolating myself in the throws of post-partum. Life will not feel so good.

Most likely, reality will fall somewhere in-between. My life will be both sweet and trying. This seems to be the way of things most of the time – especially in seasons of transition…and limited sleep.

What I believe, what I trust, is it will be how I react in the midst of the trying moments that will help determine how long they last and how deeply they’re felt....

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FINDING PEACE & JOY, SIMPLY

| Anne Williamson | 

I am not the poster child for simple living. I don’t live in a tiny house in the woods off the grid. I don’t raise livestock, darn socks or knit. I enjoy eating out, and many nights, thank g/God for TV dinners. We own two cars and more stuff than we need.

This does not mean I don’t strive to live simpler. Over a span of 15 years, I have made significant changes in the way I live and interact with “stuff.” I started off making these changes out of concern for my fellow humans and our planet. I kept making changes because I found peace in doing so.

This peace has come not with any sort of “arrival” but through the journey of gradually eliminating some things so that other things may speak more freely, may take up more space, in my life....

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SPIRITUAL MUSCLE TRAINING

| ANNE WILLIAMSON |

I love to garden. No, that's not broad enough: I love all yard work. I do. I love being outside, digging in the dirt and listening to nature. I love the physicality; sawing off a dead limb on a tree makes me feel strong and capable. And, I love its tangible results; spend a few minutes and that bush takes shape; spend a few hours and that garden bed is alive with new colors. It's satisfying. Me + it = something I can see, a project done. 

I love spirituality too, but hardly because it behaves similar to gardening. The nature thing is there, but often it's incredibly frustrating how head and heart and intangible the whole thing feels. Whether your chosen path to connect is meditation or chanting or "accepting Jesus" or whatever, you + it doesn't always = peace, enlightenment, you name it. Changing the shape of our hearts and minds, our lives, the world, is slow work, satisfying often only in time.   

This is why I'm starting to think it takes real practice and discipline. Why "they," whoever they are, were wise folks when they named the methods we use to connect and grow in love exactly that: spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines. I'm presently smack dab in the middle of a 21-day meditation challenge, and I can hear my spirit saying, "This is what is required, if you want peace." Not necessarily meditation, but a commitment to train my "spiritual muscles," a commitment to practice until and through new habits or ways of being take shape. What do you think? LISTEN on, LEARN, LOVE...

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