Tag: spirituality

Peace

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.
Step Parenting

On the Spiritual Practice of Step Parenthood

by ErinLeave a Comment on On the Spiritual Practice of Step Parenthood

Looking around my life this morning: kitchen cleaned up by husband whose towering veggie sandwich made par moi awaits him, two gorgeous dogs mildly whining for the backyard and who will get 42 acres of forest in two weeks, soccer on the Google, salmon and lox as my breakfast… the sun is out, the day feels fresh, I feel different.

I think it is important to understand the concept of letting new things, like mornings and years, be new.

In my yoga classes, I often cue to let the pose or the breath or the twist or the practice “be as meaningful as you need it to be”.

A major part of “drawing energy up” is believing you are drawing energy up.

A major part of “letting go” is allowing yourself to let go of the need to identify what to let go of and instead, let go.

Breathe in, let no words in, hover in the moment, exhale. Look around. Do it again.

I have been going back and forth for awhile on writing more candidly on Frozen Spaghetti, my personal blog, on some of the growth I have undergone related to step-parenting. In the past, a major part of my growth related to my divorce in 2011 and my unfolding as a young mother of two little girls was writing. I would feel something, open a blog post, find it – let it ramble, (attempt to) button it up and get on with it.

But, you know, a major part of writing as part of the growth process is sharing what you are learning about yourself.

In the wake of divorce and in the vitality of young motherhood – I was sharing what I learned about my own sturdiness, abilities and resourcefulness.

And though the theme of resourcefulness remains huge, sharing on the growth process relative to step parenthood requires sharing what I have learned about my inner cry baby and what I know from childhood on how to manipulate to get the attention of somebody whose attention other people also want… those other people being actual children. Hence, very quickly one can digress.

Being a step parent in the way I have chosen to take on the role (honestly, humbly and messily) has meant stepping into a vat of emotional pain from my early days of cry babyhood and competing for parental love and attention as the middle child of five kids.

Said another way, I have been in a state of active healing healing healing over the past two years since my life changed as a pandemic bride.

But now, it’s a new year. And like I mentioned early on – the day feels fresh and I feel different. Things have become steady. I have found ease.

See, I have been missing Frozen Spaghetti for the writing process but I know the growth process I am in does not need writing like what benefited the evolution of my 2011 mental game or learning to be a mother.

Growth in step parenthood, rather, has required mid-morning showers when everybody has gone off to school, early bedtimes and lots of sleep, good lotion, walks, breathing, and feeling like myself: a super creative yoga chick who sings and writes songs and has good bangs that landed the dad to begin with…

And because I have allowed the healing (it’s been messy), I feel like maybe I can more easily write on what I have learned from becoming a stepmom bc – most importantly – it has helped me as a friend, a sister, a wife, a yoga teacher, a writer, a “mom mom” and as an individual.

It is my belief, any tendencies of co-dependency you have will be evident in your challenges as a step parent.

It is my supporting belief overcoming co-dependency requires a self trust provided only by a foundation of knowledge and understanding, the gift of wisdom / intuitive voice.

And it is my unwavering belief uncovering such knowledge, understanding and openness to wisdom (as required to overcome codependent impulses to explain, defend, advise or justify incessantly) is a spiritual practice.

As such, unless your spirituality is truly pure and non prescriptive, unless your version of God embraces the full idea of being made in God’s image making you both the wrath & redemption or unless your version of Christianity recognizes Jesus’ Buddhist yogi tendencies; your spiritual life needs to shift. Your spirituality must usher you into an understanding of how your beliefs are the root of your suffering, how relationships work as mirrors and how the power of your own breath, the sanctity of your own mind body connection, the priority of your own physical self care (and acceptance, ladies) are what actually helps you step into alignment with your life.

And, with that, you can see how my process of using these spiritual and emotional resources in becoming a happy step mom (NOT that it is easy!!!!!) leaks out and creates happiness and purpose in all of these other roles in life. You can see how it creeps into my yoga teaching. And, if you read my books, you’ll even see a constant commitment to creating a safe “either way” situation. My creative work seeks truth and allows interpretation where all truth is God’s truth. If it doesn’t feel safe and life-giving, I don’t publish it.

My point: becoming a step parent has by far challenged me more than any other role assigned to me in this life and, for that reason, I believe it is responsible for evolving me as a woman across the board. So, I might as well write more about it because, if you have a step child – you have a doorway, a portal and outlet to become the next amazing version of you. And, if you don’t, the principles will still apply.

That is the Frozen Spaghetti way… it’s what makes it Apple Tree Magic.

Ok. Bye for now,

Little Red Zen.

Patience

Keeping Yourself Intact

by Erin2 Comments on Keeping Yourself Intact

Last night, I stayed up until one in the morning, grooming a 4 page file that will print into a stair step fold on synthetic treeless paper and offer the words I have read forwards and backwards after waking and writing them at odd hours throughout the year, all lined up with inspired artwork, imagery and packaged up in a signature out side of the box idea.

It has been a labor of love and I can only pray with fingers crossed that this next proof has the measurements right so that I can confidently move all in on the next step.

One of my favorite parts of last night, was reading to my sister over FaceTime while she worked on a puzzle. I still can’t quite read the end without crying and when I got through it, I laughed through tears and looked at my sister. Who normally has quips and ideas and thoughts but in that moment, just looked over while still working on the puzzle – had tears in her eyes as well – and said, “that’s awesome.”

It is awesome. It’s a stew of memory, real stories, and intention.

Lately, when I feel like I absolutely have bitten off way too much, what helps me is that this project is actually awesome.

See, I don’t yet know how all the yoga fits with the self-publishing my personal canon fits with raising the dogs fits with perfecting the homemade biscuits supports the new marriage helps with the step parenting guides the getting one kid off the college informs the shaping the upcoming driver tends as the helpful daughter makes space as the committed granddaughter.

But I do know life is not right without it all.

And I do know the one consistency in all of it is my need to “not quench the spirit”.

Which, for as important of concept in my day to day life, ironically is the theme of the devotional I just cannot seem to get off the ground.

In conversations lately, I have heard several friends expressing a desire to be out from under the microscope, relieved from the tone police, allowed to live their life, trusted.

I find this theme is as present in my day to day (through my own experience or in listening to theirs) as the theme to not quench the spirit, and both ideas are equally present in my ambition – my active, iterative task list – my yoga life.

Again, this leads me to this question: how does it all tie together?

Keeping yourself intact when you feel ripped a part or scrutinized takes an enormous amount of mental resolve. Mental resolve takes patience.

One of the original Greek words for patience was “long suffering”.

What I have learned in my creative process and the requirement to “hold the line” of concentration in order to bring all of the inspired bits and pieces into one completed work, is it is an active state of listening. At least, for me it is.

Does “long suffering” get easier when patience isn’t working through something, but listening through something?

Relationally, I know the more tense I feel equates to the need I have to defend myself or explain, to accommodate or justify.

I have learned over time, becoming witness and listening helps any emotional mess that wants to cause erroneous emotional labor in my emotional world stay outside of my world. Similar to my midnight hours last night, it is all about listening. Responding, not reacting.

Keeping yourself intact, I do believe, requires you know the root truth of who you are, what you are trying to accomplish.

These motivations help you say yes and allow or to say no and avoid.

My file is at the printer this morning. I am hopeful about it. I am excited. I listened last night. I stopped when a part of the layout didn’t fit easily together. I picked up what felt right. I went back and forth, pruning, twisting, loving, allowing.

More than anything, I feel I have matured in my ability to avoid letting unanswered questions – the general unfolding of life – make me feel unworthy or unable to get something done. It looks different than I thought it would at first, but the spirit is well hydrated. :)

If you feel like you are emotionally man-handled, I would love to know some of the ways you recognize when something or somebody is creeping into your world and loosening the threads. It’s a really common theme for a lot of people. You aren’t alone.

Trying noticing if silence helps you. Use the breath. Make some art.