How often do we trust our hearts? How often do we hear our hearts? Like really hear them?
This is a picture of my dog listening to his heart. He has such joy every time we finish up on a sandy beach and will just throw himself to the round and roll. The first time he did it we thought he was having a fit but now it just makes us laugh. We laugh because he is so joyful when he does it. But my reason for putting up this picture is that, I believe, if we all listened to our hearts more we would be more joyful and so would those around us.
So how do we know what our hearts are wanting for us? If you search “heart” on my blog you will find 68 blogs that mention heart. Hearing your heart is something I do keep coming back to. I suppose because it is something I have been learning more and more to do and getting such joy from it.
It is one of the reasons I didn’t post yesterday even though I had said I would attempt to blog through the whole of March. Something didn’t feel right about what I was thinking of doing and so I just left it. I am learning that I don’t need to know why my heart feels that way but just to trust it.
It does means slowing down a bit. It does mean trusting that I’m feeling and hearing. It does mean being willing to go with it too. No point hearing and trusting and not doing. Though the other day my heart was really telling me not to do something but it was something that I felt I could not get out of so I went. Once there I knew it wasn’t where I should have been. Things were out of place and chaotic. Yes I was able to support someone who was struggling with the situation, but actually my time would have been more wisely spent in not going. Of being brave enough to just say “I’m not going to make it this time”. Also at the beginning of the week my heart said to text a certain person I hadn’t seen in ages so I did and it resulted in a lovely walk in the woods and a good natter. Shame I hadn’t been brave enough to trust my heart and the not going.
I will try to keep up my month challenge of blogging but if I don’t I won’t beat myself up about it but will trust my heart that I am writing what I am meant to be writing when I am meant to be writing it.
Be brave and try and join me – not in blogging every day but in trusting your heart for each thing you do. To me that is true adventuring.
sharing this book on his Instagram ages ago) This quote from Jan’s course jumped out at me because it fits in so much with what I am reading at the moment that Willard is saying the problem with Christianity is. (Note I am only on page 77 at the moment 🙂 )
and even alcohol. It lasted five days before I decided that I needed to finish the elderflower presse off with the gin liquor my daughter had given me. It was a week before I decided to use the cheese that was in the fridge for a meal, to use up the mushrooms that were lurking in the vegetable rack with the turkey that was sitting in the bottom of the freezer. Why couldn’t I do it? Because I was doing it as an “ought” rather than it being something my innermost being wanted to do. And the funny thing is that we generally only eat meat once or twice a week, drink wine only on a weekend, and only have spirits on special occasions! It was in the telling myself I couldn’t that I wanted to. When it is just a part of my life – I suppose part of my innermost being – then it is easy.
So I think we need to stop telling people that Jesus lets us see a meaning to life, or even telling people they don’t know the meaning of life but help to show them the bits of Jesus life that help us all to find true connection with our innermost being and truly bring us alive. And to be honest I don’t want to hangout with a God that doesn’t do that for me
There are 12 verses in the second chapter of in the gospel of Matthew that talk about what happened with them but all we are told about them is “Magi from the east came“, they go to visit King Herod because they know that this is where a king should be found, get told by his advisers that a prophecy says the ‘King of the Jews will be born in Bethlehem’, they go and visit Jesus and then don’t go back to see Herod. From these 250-300 words, depending on translation, the Christian faith has made up a whole mythology about these “Magi” that is now believed.
they go to visit a new born king? I think it was because the stars foretold how great this King was. Why go and visit a great king? To get great gifts from him. I believe these Magi had money, either of their own or were in a position to tax the people around where they lived. I think they came in a huge caravan of camels and servants and tents and gifts. Why do I think this? Because everything I’ve read about King Herod is that he was a despot and would not have let in three lowly travellers even if they did say they were off to worship the new king. I believe, from all I have read about Herod, that he would have either dismissed them or had them killed. But he welcomes them in. They must have been an impressive sight and he must have known he couldn’t silence them. I believe they came with gifts, not just the gold, frankincense and myrrh that are mention, but much more. I believe the Bible only mentions those three gifts because they are the significant ones. I do believe that the Bible misses many details out. Why say that they gave other things when Matthew wanted to make a point to his readers of who Jesus is?
mailing list. I started with “There have been four fantastic workshops over this past week …” and go on to talk about the new well-being one I’m doing at Llandudno Museum, the restart of the Memoirs one after it’s Easter break and the two that I am now doing at Gwrych Castle. But it got me thinking “what makes something a success?” and Why am I saying these workshops have been fantastic?
joining us next week from the previous set of workshops. At the Memoirs one the group are sharing details about their lives to each other and one came in with a brochure for another relating to something they spoke about a fortnight previous. Networks and friendships are being made.
So many of us have had to find our own roots and wings due to circumstances beyond our control, and often beyond our parent’s control. As I find my roots settling down deeper into the soil of North Wales, and especially this lovely little town, I feel my wings getting stronger. I am learning that to truly fly you do not have to travel the world but can stay in a small area but be truly free. But that is for a different blog 🙂 
planning month – which actually I have successfully done – on the whole. I have workshops planned and ready to go. I have advertising sorted and sent out to whoever I can think of. Actually as someone said to me it wasn’t so much a quiet month as an unstructured month where I had few time restraints – at least on the days I had at home.
time of journalling over the hen weekend and came to some great realisations. Ok this might seem obvious to many but I have finally realised that
Maybe it is because I’m a writer that I have to explore my thoughts via writing? I don’t know. All I know is that by the end of that weekend at the beginning of April I knew the things I had to put my energies in for the next year. Oh yes not the next month or so but the next year. This has been such a help in planning the workshops I am going to be doing, doing the advertising which I find tedious and also filling the rest of my month.
enough. Today I was on local radio – blogged here 
be publishing a book about it all soon. Another person who not only found her passion as her children moved on but, like myself, the doors seemed to open then. And there is another friend of a similar age who is now off on mission journeys into India, to the Calais Jungle and on the streets of the town where she lives. Again like myself and my gardening friend she’s up and ready for it but like us both she is starting to make connections with the right people, move in the right circles, be bold enough to step out.
because now they can fly unhindered 🙂
So Sunday I was at the Open day for Gwrych Castle. The theme was Halloween, as it is at this time of the year. Something we can either accept, ignore or try to fight against. For me, as a Christian, I did get some flax about getting involved in something that was centred around Halloween. Did I think about that first of and pray hard? To be perfectly honest – No! I was so excited to be asked to go and do some story telling – something I love doing but haven’t had much opportunity to do ever. Yes I did read to my children when they were small and they loved it. I have read at times but not often enough. So for me the excitement of being asked over road anything deeper than that. :)
introduced to them because Mark, who heads up the Gwrych Trust likes people to know each other. Also these guys were planning on taking my photo at some point during my story telling to see if I had a ghost presence around me. So I chatted to them and asked what it was all about. Well it is all very spiritual and it gave me the opportunity to chat about being a Christian and the spirituality of that. Hey there’s a lot I don’t understand and who’s to say that all these spiritual things are evil?
judgemental Christian worse than the exploring spiritual person. And I’m just hoping God can do something with the words I was able to share.
For a while I have fancied running creative writing workshops, especially after I started the Creative Writing For Therapeutic Purposes MSc. I have loads of thoughts and plans and ideas written all over the place and half baked ideas for websites. It was some of the reason I started this blog; to get an online presence that I liked.
Because I’m in for the long haul and through starting I have connected with other people, have actually got something off the ground, am being known as a person in this area who does this sort of thing, and feel like I am doing something. I feel excited about what is going to happen in two weeks time with the start of these workshops but also excited about what will grow from it. Now I’ve started I will keep going. In fact now its out in the open I will get encouragement from these lovely ladies that are now in my life and who knows where it will go and morph and become.
Aspirational Adventures 