P.S. Her name is pronounced Bon Brannock. :-) Back tomorrow with tales of Mum's adventures!
Showing posts with label sarah ban breathnach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sarah ban breathnach. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Quote-of-the-day: Sarah Ban Breathnach
P.S. Her name is pronounced Bon Brannock. :-) Back tomorrow with tales of Mum's adventures!
Monday, March 2, 2009
Spring Cleaning
The above quote comes from Kathryn L. Robyn via Sarah Ban Breathnach's Moving On. I'm reading it for the 4th time. The theme for this month and in my life and in this season seems to be about clutter. And getting rid of it. Not that you would know from the snow that fell last night, but we were starting to have spring around here. Starting. Still, a good time to stay indoors, warm and cozy & go thru some boxes. Which I would do if I were in my little river house. As it is, I'm still at Mum's, and Mum is still in Santa Domingo because her flight was cancelled due to snow in Atlanta. Lousy Smarch weather. Oh well. Tea, anyone? Have a cozy day.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Fall Apart and Leave the Pieces Behind
I like to think of myself as a positive person. I’m a look-on-the-bright-side kinda gal, sometimes to my detriment. I make lemonade out of lemons when perhaps I should find a different fruit. To me, the glass is half full, but as Larry Winget points out, it’s more important what’s in that glass. It doesn’t much matter if it’s half full or half empty when it’s a glassful of urine.
A couple years ago, I promised myself that I was going to start telling the truth. The Truth. It wasn’t about anyone else, it was about acknowledging what was in my heart, if only to myself. It was a promise that shook up my life because when you acknowledge the truth of your being, you are listening to your soul. And once you start listening to your soul, things that are no longer appropriate in your life, fall away. Kind of like an old hairstyle or the day glo socks from the ‘80’s that you would never wear again.
I have spent the past 8 months in contemplation. My life was sorely out of balance and I didn’t know what else to do but to remove myself from the environment I was in and look for peace in the stillness of the country. Funny thing about that: Wherever you go, you take *you* with you. And removing distractions only puts the real issues under the magnifying glass. Socrates said, Know thyself. What happens when the you that you thought you knew is not at all who you really are? John says, Who you are is someone you made up and got comfortable with. Dave Dobson likes to say, Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Most people will postpone their lives indefinitely to stay comfortable. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t, as the saying goes.
“And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ Anais Nin
John has remarked that most women are leading lives of dissatisfaction, and awaken to that realization somewhere between the ages of 35-50. And then they fall apart. They wake up one morning and ask, Is this IT? I can attest that it was a question I asked myself. Did God really put me on the planet for THIS??? One day I confided to a friend that I was asking these dangerous questions. She said, They’re dangerous because you’re playing with fire and fire burns away to the truth. That it does. And the truth was that I woke up with the desperate desire to live a conscious life by design. Not out of habit or patterns. I wanted the joy I felt in my meditations to translate into the rest of my life. And it wasn’t. It was helping me to cope and it was helping me to continue on down an inevitable path of self-doubt.
The falling-apart part is the letting go of old patterns; patterns of thinking, patterns of behaving, patterns of responding or reacting. The pieces chip away like a sculpture, to reveal the Authentic Self, that part of our being that Sarah Ban Breathnach so eloquently describes in her books. The Authentic Self who doesn’t bow down to social convention or other people’s opinions. The Self that says, “Do this, go that way,” when logic would dictate otherwise because the Authentic Self cares nothing of common sense. It is the intellect that needs to have an explanation or reason before taking action. The Authentic Self is a leap of Faith. Trouble is, I have been trying to keep one foot behind on solid ground and we all know that you can’t make a leap like that. A leap doesn’t come in steps.
It reminds me of the story of a person standing at the edge of a cliff with an angel.
The angel says, “Come to the edge.”
She says, “But I’m afraid.”
“Come to the edge.”
And she says, “I can’t."
So the angel pushes her.
She flies.
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” ~Martin Luther King
A couple years ago, I promised myself that I was going to start telling the truth. The Truth. It wasn’t about anyone else, it was about acknowledging what was in my heart, if only to myself. It was a promise that shook up my life because when you acknowledge the truth of your being, you are listening to your soul. And once you start listening to your soul, things that are no longer appropriate in your life, fall away. Kind of like an old hairstyle or the day glo socks from the ‘80’s that you would never wear again.
I have spent the past 8 months in contemplation. My life was sorely out of balance and I didn’t know what else to do but to remove myself from the environment I was in and look for peace in the stillness of the country. Funny thing about that: Wherever you go, you take *you* with you. And removing distractions only puts the real issues under the magnifying glass. Socrates said, Know thyself. What happens when the you that you thought you knew is not at all who you really are? John says, Who you are is someone you made up and got comfortable with. Dave Dobson likes to say, Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Most people will postpone their lives indefinitely to stay comfortable. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t, as the saying goes.
“And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ Anais Nin
John has remarked that most women are leading lives of dissatisfaction, and awaken to that realization somewhere between the ages of 35-50. And then they fall apart. They wake up one morning and ask, Is this IT? I can attest that it was a question I asked myself. Did God really put me on the planet for THIS??? One day I confided to a friend that I was asking these dangerous questions. She said, They’re dangerous because you’re playing with fire and fire burns away to the truth. That it does. And the truth was that I woke up with the desperate desire to live a conscious life by design. Not out of habit or patterns. I wanted the joy I felt in my meditations to translate into the rest of my life. And it wasn’t. It was helping me to cope and it was helping me to continue on down an inevitable path of self-doubt.
The falling-apart part is the letting go of old patterns; patterns of thinking, patterns of behaving, patterns of responding or reacting. The pieces chip away like a sculpture, to reveal the Authentic Self, that part of our being that Sarah Ban Breathnach so eloquently describes in her books. The Authentic Self who doesn’t bow down to social convention or other people’s opinions. The Self that says, “Do this, go that way,” when logic would dictate otherwise because the Authentic Self cares nothing of common sense. It is the intellect that needs to have an explanation or reason before taking action. The Authentic Self is a leap of Faith. Trouble is, I have been trying to keep one foot behind on solid ground and we all know that you can’t make a leap like that. A leap doesn’t come in steps.
It reminds me of the story of a person standing at the edge of a cliff with an angel.
The angel says, “Come to the edge.”
She says, “But I’m afraid.”
“Come to the edge.”
And she says, “I can’t."
So the angel pushes her.
She flies.
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” ~Martin Luther King
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Happy Day of Thanks & Giving
Blogs across A-MER-ica will be paying tribute to today, this day of Thanksgiving. I've been Quote Gal this week, so here's my quote:
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more....It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~Melody Beattie
There have been many influences in creating a sense of gratitude in my life. However, my bible is Sarah Ban Breathnach's book, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of comfort and Joy. What a gift she is to the world! When you ask yourself What am I most grateful for in my life? it opens the heart, brings you into the present moment, and dispels the worries and stresses of the day. Gratitude fills your spirit so that there is room for nothing else. In all things give thanks.
OK, so how to transition into this?
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more....It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~Melody Beattie
There have been many influences in creating a sense of gratitude in my life. However, my bible is Sarah Ban Breathnach's book, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of comfort and Joy. What a gift she is to the world! When you ask yourself What am I most grateful for in my life? it opens the heart, brings you into the present moment, and dispels the worries and stresses of the day. Gratitude fills your spirit so that there is room for nothing else. In all things give thanks.
OK, so how to transition into this?
What is that in the middle of the labyrinth? you may be asking. Well. Let me tell you. Except I don't know. I've been eating lots of pumpkin. It all started when my GSF Bess said that she spent hours in the kitchen preparing this elaborate pumpkin recipe and in the end, it tasted like sweet potato. I LOVE sweet potatoes, so I went to a local produce stand. [Side note, here: It's operated on an honour system. There's a coffee can where you leave your payment. How cool is that in the 21st century?!]
So I got some pumpkins. I've baked and I've steamed them. Steaming is best for a uniform consistency. A hand blender makes it smooth & creamy. You can go savory or sweet with it. I've made cream-of-pumkin soup, and curried pumpkin soup (my fave), and just mixed in honey & cinnamon for a sweet. Bess said it's really great in pancakes, so I will try that next.
Back to the labyrinth: when I was at my brother's, they had hundreds of pumpkins at the horse farm for decoration and let me take some home. I took a coupla these and they are AMAZING! I think it might be a blue hubbard. They are by far the BEST! Smooth, subtle, light, creamy. Whatever it is, my mother had to go to an "International" potluck gathering & bring a traditional dish (because the English are known for their culinary skills--haha). In the past she's taken Shepherd's pie, & trifle. So she put the blue hubbard in a blender with some milk and then chilled it. No sweetener, and she said it was better than custard and everyone loved it.
So that's my Martha post for the day. Have a WONDERFUL day of thanks & giving! :-) H.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)