Author: Erin

I write - all the time - mostly random thoughts on that which makes me happy every day of my life.
Words in Sentences

Soli Deo Gloria – Where is the stone? 

by ErinLeave a Comment on Soli Deo Gloria – Where is the stone? 

Where is the stone? 

An Easter Reflection from a woman without a church. 

As I made my way through my home this morning, the quiet of the neighborhood streets allowing the birds their sweet morning – the light of spring, the shift in the green, the more fullness of the irises and the tulips and the early hostas… beginning of milkweed… the question of what survived 2022 arrived. The year I stopped gardening after one weekend of planting. I didn’t water. I didn’t try.

And now in the current year? 

Now I am curious. 

In Palm Springs, I began to study Feng Shui for the outside of the home… How to use the elements, the directions, the idea of protection and allowance – invitation and slowness – to gather good energy for the inside of the home & those who dwell within it. 

So my time outside runs along key areas. Always walking – shifting – lining up – considering. I’m into it. And the time already is serving me in both the feeling of accomplishment (why I started gardening to begin with) and the new found feeling of maturity – freedom – and how those both things together calm you down. 

My last round in the garden brought me down to my native plant plot… to a closer look to see… and I noticed in my shuffling through the dirt and the dead, I moved a stone. I saw a stone had moved. And it brought to awareness a ricochet of not just all the other stones I had moved about in my morning time outside today, but to the fact today is Easter. A memorial holiday of one key stone having been moved away. 

I stood up in the green yard in front of my home, I took in the sunshine – again the perfect calm – and the creative energy within me stirred me to write. 

I listened to the birds. 

I came in and made a meal. 

And now, I finish this post before I head back out to see about a fire. 

<deep breath in>

Here I am – in 2023, with the rest of my life in front of me. A husband and two dogs in my home with the back door open, the smell of popcorn & sound of Premier League next to the dishwasher, the rearranged family photos next to the things placed in my home as prayers, for our future – for my family – for our earth. 

Our stars. 

And all the things in it. 

Easter? 

Easter is about life. And not as in the whole “a life worth living” thing, at least – for me…

Life are blues (like the perfect blue) and greens. 

Air and water, warmth and change. 

Heat and transformation. 

And being an Easter Person? 

Is about being alive in life.

On that note… a big glass of water and the perfect sunshine await. 

How is Easter showing you new?

How are you feeling?

May the sun radiate hope and warmth for you.

  • aerial view of native plant plot
    Looking down, clearing out old, I see the new.
  • Aerial view of a full sun bed
    Next to last year’s main garden event (the establishment of our mailbox), the tulips and beginning of iris plot emerge.
  • A woman and her dog adventure in Boone's County
    Gal time with my dog in the sun? Yes please!
  • Because you only live once
    Baby Bel bites buried in browned hashbrowns with some soulard grill spice & organic happy chicken brown eggs. Ginger Peaches in syrup, thai spice and honey with thawed out Target shrimp.
Words in Sentences

And then Spirit sent Fawn

by ErinLeave a Comment on And then Spirit sent Fawn

Back in March, when I was soaking in a hot tub in Palm Springs – I met LaRissa, a woman one month my senior (to the exact date, if I remember correctly) and we connected on all things spiritual. The desert mountains were snow capped, I was at ease – we ended up having a conversation not in the hot tub & over oat milk lattes before she left to go back to CO and it was for sure we were friends. Even now, knowing I want to give her a call today – I feel this complete recognition that she is meant to be a friend in this season of my life.

This season of my life…

I overwhelm myself sometimes with how much I have going at once. Constantly having to assess and say “is this aligned”, “is this life giving”, “does this feel energized and expansive”… Yet this season of my life is showing buds and starting to reveal what this next harvest of fruit might look like. That sentence reminds me of a project that came up for attention last night, a little draft I started, and the feeling of excitement I get when I want to share it with somebody – even if prematurely.

When I say “reminds me of a project that came up for attention”, I mean exactly that: I am laying in bed, I am attempting to sleep and then an idea comes up and I will just lay there and explore it in my mind. I will see it and watch it and (most importantly) feel it and some to dos, some action items, will trickle out of the time. Sometimes getting me out of bed completely…

Yesterday I had coffee with Fawn, a woman about 20 years my senior which is always a nice welcome reprieve for my psyche. I love to hear myself talk but when I am with women my senior, the fact they have a decade or more on me prompts me to listen – intently – for clues, or “crumbs” as Fawn calls them.

Fawn and I have an interesting history that starts with me picking up a black London Fog trench coat at a swap night about 6 years ago. OH MAN was I excited for the find. It was one of her contributions to the swap. That’s when I first learned her name. Since then, we cross paths at the studio and – in Feb – we got to talking about hospice. You may remember I wrote a life speech / eulogy for my friend Nancy last year and – ever since then – I have been longing to do more of those. The proximity to a person’s worldview in the later stages of their life is – again as Fawn would call it – a blessing. A humbling, fascinating blessing…

She would know because she was in fact a hospice nurse for 28 years and has written a collection of her stories. We agreed to exchange books and I took hers with me to Palm Springs. I was reading it when I met LaRissa…

Total transparency: the role of self publishing in regards to creating and marketing – the bones and the business – at the same time is challenging for me. I want help but I don’t know how to ask for it that well. I get things to states of completion and then it’s like “ok what can I communicate consistently” and before I know it, the book has been on Amazon for three months and I still don’t have a single review. Because, again, I haven’t asked. My friend Dana reminded me at lunch a month ago “your friends want to help you – we want to support you” and even now hearing that in her voice brings tears up because – well – it’s time for me to figure out how to ask for that if I want to continue pursuing life as a full time artist.

Back to Fawn. So – that whole which project wakes me up thing evolved over coffee with Fawn who, in her fluid centered sense asked me, “So when Spirit tells you what to work on…”

So when Spirit…

Spirit. :)

(Side note, @laughwithspirit is my Colorado hot tub friend’s IG handle…. and here is her website)

In my therapy these past couple of weeks, I have had major breakthroughs in regards to an understanding of capital S Self and how operating from courage, confidence and creativity isn’t a request you have to make and wait for that place to arrive – it’s you. All the time. Who you are. I told Fawn the fact I am relearning a lot of this sometimes makes me feel like what am I doing teaching yoga and she reminded me something along the lines of “yes – but to be a teacher don’t you have to be a student”. Oh gosh. The way Spirit works…

Fawn’s question reminded me that I get to partner with Spirit, not just sit around and wait. That Spirit – the Spirit that wrote A Christmas Tree Story from beginning to end – the Spirit that created the hippo and the vines of Words that Rhyme and Lullabies – the Spirit that stirs the magic of the Apple Tree… I get to connect each morning rather than wait around each night.

I get to inquire: what do we do today, Spirit? And feel the energy of that blessing.

So, today we are designing the Facebook cover event for a reading next Saturday.

We are going to start on animation for three digital shorts that have audio… ya know – audio I recorded professionally in Palm Springs.

Because I am an artist.

I am an artist.

I am an artist.

And God help me Lord, I am getting things done.

PS Here is Fawn’s book! (Through my affiliate link, of course)

Words in Sentences

On Peace

by Erin1 Comment on On Peace

It’s Sunday morning and I’m outside by a fire in some great midwestern Feb sun, a hoodie and with a jelly jar of 2019 (our engagement year) Washington red wine.

David is walking up with some dry firewood I had stashed in my vintage (2006?) Honda from a workshop I taught back in the fall. I am breathing deep and reflecting – a lot – on Kindness, its relationship to Peace and how often we are required to call these forward because there is more LOVE in our life.

That’s right. I believe as Love increases in your life, there is a shift in how much Peace you experience.

Think about getting a puppy. More Love, less Peace. It makes sense.

Just as I write this, I notice the warm body of my blonde boy dog, Thor. Gorgeous dog, honestly who is now getting pets and ear strokes from David. Also enjoying the casual sunshine on a winter morning, we all know spring is a thing and are happy to see the world turning its way.

I believe as God gives you more Love through people and through dogs, the shift in how much Peace the external world gives you is not to make you question the Love or its meaning but to draw you inward. For what more is the spirit of Peace than the breath? The balance of alternate nostril breathing, the purification of breath of fire, the immediate effects of more oxygen in the brain from simple 3 part or 6 count inhales. I mean. Peace, I think, has always been meant to come from within.

I like to say I don’t know what I am doing with my life and I tend towards the struggle of “what’s the point and purpose” but I know how it feels to stumble upon freeing spiritual perspective and if there is one thing I can offer the world, it would be – at minimum – a sample of the truth in my life that is making navigation easier. Note: It’s not making hard things easier, it’s making the navigation of life easier. Hard things will always be hard.

My reflections this morning started as noticing how self love is God’s love and morphed into how inner peace is God’s Peace. I read Psalm 13 and replaced “Lord” with Peace and broke down the words to feel applicable: “How long, Peace – will you forget me forever? How long will you hide what you look like these days (face) from me?”

What does Peace look like these days?

There is an American Spiritual Song that references Peace “like a river” – Peace as changeable, fluid, evolving. But yet, always in the same direction – always headed for it’s bigger place. Able to carry, able to be explored. Peace can look like anything.

For me, a big part of my spiritual life is noticing how my faith in something bigger than me that gives me purpose requires me to grow and change. I think of the whole process like a plant. A little tender plant brought home from the nursery and how – no matter how long I have been gardening – I always brace myself for that first heavy rain or forceful wind. Astonished the next morning how the plant seems a little stronger because of what it weathered.

Its first full day in blazing sun where it looks parched and in desperate need of water, to then drink and seem to have grown an inch.

What are you taking in? Through your body, your senses, your heart? And how is the heat of it? The force of it? Changing you?

That growth, seems to be, an internal process based on what the plant takes in from the outside.

So what does Peace look like for you today?

And how can you use that breath – that fire – that sunshine – that ease to allow the internal processes to take in the elements of life and transform your heart?

Just keep figuring yourself out, honestly. Is all you can do.