August 7, 2007

JOURNEY

Returning from the beautiful hills of Vermont last week, I had time to wonder at the beauty of nature. I had time to ponder my own development and journey. My life has turned out so differently than I expected. Recognizing myself in my customers, I realized that the last two weeks we've all been either impatient with ourselves wanting to get to what we want on our timeline, wishing we could skip the emotional journey and responsiblity required. Or beating ourselves up for what we didn't know or didn't do. As I have in the past, I offer the words of Mark Nepo for us all:


Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2007 07:47:58 -0400
Subject: Weekly Reflection-8.6.07
Dear Friends,

This week's reflection speaks to the ongoing dynamic between who what
we are and who we are. And, as always, I would welcome your own
reflections and reactions.

I hope this finds you well.

warmly,

Mark
*****************************************
I AM BECOMING
Mark Nepo

When God is asked in the Torah for His name, a reply comes from the
unseeable, *I am Becoming** At once, *Becoming* emanates two
meanings. As a noun, it suggests that God is a process, that the sacred
reveals itself in a life of transformation and unfolding. As a verb, it
suggests that God is still emerging, still not completely defined,
beautifully as unfinished as we are. All this implies that our unfolding
and God*s unfolding are intricately connected. You could say that the
aim of any sacred becoming is not to arrive at any finished state, but
to taste everything in our brush with life and thereby know, through
experience, the hint of what is holy.

The kind of courage this requires is both real and noble. Noble in what
Parker Palmer calls *a fidelity to the best potentials of the human
spirit,* a faithfulness to what is possible if we keep sparking
tomorrow with who we are today; and real in a fidelity to the
inescapable, though terribly avoidable, fact that the only way to
*become* is through facing our experience directly. The mystical
Persian poet of the thirteenth century, *A***r, who was an immediate
ancestor to Rumi, endorses this kind of courage when he says, *Seek
for your soul, spiritual knowledge from what is Real.*

In other words, though it is understandable to pray for God to remove
us from our pain and confusion, God waits at the very heart of that pain
and confusion, if we can *become* our way through it. So it might
serve us better to pray for the wherewithal to endure the flare of
earthly moods that rims God*s presence. For experience heats us into
what is central and sacred the way that gold is melted at intense
temperatures. It presses us into what is immediate and clear the way
that coal is pressed into a diamond. It wears us into what matters the
way the ocean wears the sharp edges from the mouth of a shell.

Yet how can we enter our *becoming* now, today? Especially in an
age whose crosscurrents keep us skipping on the surface. Our constant
initiation is the call to go below that surface. No easy task. But in
truth, any moment of experience will draw us below if we can ride it
instead of fight it. And when asked, along the way, *What are you?*
we can answer with Buddha, *I am Awake.* And when asked, as we fall
or rise, *Who are you?*-we can answer with Yahweh, *I am
Becoming**
*****************************************
These reflections are excerpts from several books. Mark has two new
books appearing in 2007: A new book of poems, Surviving Has Made Me
Crazy, CavanKerry Press, released in February 2007; and a new book of
spiritual non-fiction, Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Inner Courage
and Where It Lives, Red Wheel/Conari Press, will appear in September
2007. For more info, please visit www.MarkNepo.com.


PLAN OF ACTION: Journey.


"Emotional Money" Highlights for August
August 13th: Snippets of Life Part II
August 27th: Interview: Natasha Yannacanedo-actress, director, writer,
teaching artist, acting and public speaking coach as well
as an Argentine tango dancer. Her motto: The first principle of a
warrior is not being afraid of who you are.




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