Tag: Contemplative Life
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Ash Wednesday Valentine
Some days Some days Some days… I go for a walk Just to listen for the poetry that surrounds me. If I listen closely, I hear the poetry that you’re speaking. I talked to a stranger as we beheld together a perfect cloudless blue sky— even saw two butterflies, though it’s winter. Tell that to…
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savior complex
O God, Be to my loved one what I have been trying to be but cannot. This is the prayer that surfaced while I had a precious 30 minutes alone for a walk this morning. Particularly for those of us who have more porous boundaries (empaths, HSPs, Enneagram numbers in the dependent stance, folks who…
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Advent Resources
Sunday is the first day of Advent! These are some Advent books my family and/or I have enjoyed, are reading, or are TBR. We tend to cycle through and return to ones we love. Adults: Family:
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feast: a promise full, filled.
feast: a promise full, filledby Lindsay L. O’ConnorYou put this hunger in my belly,then promised me a feast.Sometimes the hunger gnawsas though it might consume meand I wonder if I will ever be satisfied.Then, I have these moments when time slows downand suddenly I see the banquet table set before me.I hear You say,“Take. Eat.…
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unedited
What would you say if you stopped editing yourself? Not in a public forum, but just alone with your Self, and maybe even with God. Part of my deconstruction has been finding the safety to stop editing myself in what I share with God. I used to be so bound up in behaving correctly and…
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rooted
RootedLife is change and all change is loss.Even gain is loss of the empty spacethat the new thing now occupies.The emptiness may have been unpleasant, but it was also familiar,and for many of us, familiarity breeds securitydue to a sense of predictabilityand control.Loss—and therefore, change—breaks us wide openas we’re confronted with the realitythat we are…
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noted.
Noted The sounds of the chickens next door remind me of a morning I woke up in Africa. There are chickens all over the world, of course, but the gentle clucks of the ones in Ilmamen, Kenya all those years ago are the ones I listened and paid attention to, soaking in every sensory detail…
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Enneagram Work + Contemplative Practices
The Enneagram describes 9 ways we deny reality.Enneagram work involves naming our patterned ways of denying reality, noticing them (with compassion) in action, & discovering how they keep us from fulfilling our core needs & desires. While Enneagram work helps name and observe the ways we deny reality, contemplative practices give us tools to practice…
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before you go
before you go Stay with yourselfStay with this momentStay with this holy unfoldingStay with this goodness.When your wise body tells you “This is good,”Stay. When your chest is wide open,expanding the width of the whole world,so entwined with creationthat the very breeze feels likethe breath expanding your lungs—Stay.Linger on this holy ground. When you glimpse…
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wind chimes
Wind ChimesThere’s a place where the sidewalkleading up to our houseslopes in a gentle curvedown to the street.On not-too-hot sunny days,I am drawn to sit here and feel the breeze lift the ends of my hairas I get lost in the soundof the wind chimeshanging over the porch.They betray a physical manifestationof the wind—that mysterious…
Lindsay L. O'Connor 