Tag Archives: Soul

Just One Moment

France & Spain 2023, Meditations, Travel, ,
Avignon, France, May 24, 2023

Sometimes dreams really do come true.

Washing up dinner dishes at the kitchen sink, I look out the window towards closing shops and a few people walking lazily through the narrow cobblestone streets below. An easy Avignon breeze brushes up against me. It carries a hint of music, pleasant aromas of evening cooking, muted sounds of laughter and dishes being cleared. And for a moment, I almost feel like this is my kitchen, my country, my life, and I think: what a good life this is.

I turn and see Les is pointing his camera my direction. He asks me to just stand there. And what I would normally hate – being asked to pose and have my picture taken – I do. Because, he saw it too. The light? The moment? The dream.

Sometimes whole dreams are lived in just one moment.

Pilgrimage

France & Spain 2023, Meditations, Travel, , , ,

Reflecting on a day of self-directed pilgrimage to Lisieux, France, and the spaces where St Therese grew up, prayed, became a Carmelite, and died at the early age of 24.

So many statues, chapels and shrines, mosaics and gilded edges, and this is the one that draws me in. Just a damp, cold corner in one of the side chapels in Lisieux Cathedral – the church where St Therese and her family worshipped before she entered the convent at age 15.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to be here, but somehow “the show” pales against the story of her life as she shared with us in The Story of a Soul.

These are a few of her words that still speak louder to me, and with more love than what the finest of architects or Popes can display.

– I am your sister and your friend. Forever I’ll watch over you.

– Have confidence in the infinite mercy of the Good God.

– An amiable smile often suffices to make a sad soul bloom.

The Basilica of Saint Therese, Lisieux, France
Saint Peter’s Cathedral, Lisieux, France

Light of the Firefly

"This" Series, Meditations, Self Care, , ,
Light of the Firefly © twyatt2022

It’s a little cooler. Still humid though. Damp, overcast, still. Quiet — eerily so.

It’s a busy day. Several zoom meetings, groceries to get, and then I need to make one more phone call this afternoon.

I am very upset. I have gained back all the weight I slaved to take off three years ago. I don’t like the way I look, or the way this feels. But, I am the same soul inside this puffy coat.

All roads out of this “coat” lead to grief. There is sadness in giving up my favorite foods — cookies, in particular. And, hope is dashed in feeling young again — lighter, less trapped and controlled by how tight these jeans feel.

Without much thought, I slip into old defaults of creating calendars with harsh diets and fantastical weight goals, followed by the predictable genuflect at the WW altar app. I pull up just in time to remember and write:

One day at a time. This day at this time.

It really is about one day at a time. This body. This mind, and most importantly — this soul.

What does this soul want most of all?

To be loved. To express. To be allowed to imagine and play as a soul alone, and a soul with others.

Long after the flesh has rotted and these bones have turned to dust,
this soul will carry on.
Its light and energy bound to nothing
and everything and everywhere without a how.
I can know this when the fires of fear fade to smoke,
and the smoke of yesterday’s stories clear — if but for a moment.
Maybe no longer than the firefly’s short glory against the darkening sky,
but long enough, at least,
to light one speck of space
in the humid blanket hovering over the bean field.

Well Wishes

"This" Series, Meditations, Self Care, ,

I was journaling this morning about disappointment in the scale and in myself. Then an idea came:

What if I dropped into this body, as it is today, from outer space and no time? No expectation, control, or history of disappointment or pain in hearing ‘tub of lard’ as a teen?

I’d look around it, inventory all the working parts, look under the hood and kick the tires and determine that ‘she’s got a few good years in her yet’. (I’m 67.) Relatively healthy. No major diseases and all fingers and toes and senses accounted for.

I took a sip of gratitude from the well of real, not should.

Then, I saw my sense of entitlement.

I had never seen or owned this before. I saw how all of my life I had hated what my body was and wasn’t. I was busy drinking Diet Rite Cola, then Tab, then diet Coke and binging on pizza in the dark. All the while mad and confused because I was big, not small. Somewhere believing that the ‘small’ women were the good women. The women of value.

In response to this old and familiar reflection I heard that new word coming out of this broken record song: entitlement.

Ouch.

And a real question:

Where did I get the idea that I was entitled to eat without restraint AND be slimmer than the average?

After the horror and embarrassment of seeing (and feeling) this honesty come forward, a measure of self compassion sneaked in as well. Then, I returned to reading from my meditation books and ultimately landing

here.

Today I am agreeing to love my body-self as I am right now—as I have been dropped into this good healthy miracle of flesh and thinking, spirit and senses without any of my doing or merit.

This morning I am making a decision to support myself with good choices. This includes connecting here, and wishing all of us well too.

One day at a time.

This day.

This.

Minou the Masterful Cat

Meditations, Pecos, , ,

Minou lounging © twyatt 2014I made a conscious decision to unplug and keep the focus on the inside journey of the soul while attending school at The Abbey in Pecos.  But my writing continued in a plethora of notebooks and journals – recording the events of the day as well as how the Spirit (with a capital S) moved among and through us.  I’ll be posting more of these as they unwind – falling to form the mosaic that I know God created in me, and all of us as one Body of Christ. Continue reading Minou the Masterful Cat →