Woodland walk. just me and my dog. A space to think. April 1st 2023. Photographed by myself.
I was going to write a post about another thing that keeps niggling at me but I felt I wanted to revisit Forgiveness before I can really let it go.
I’m not sure if it is forgiveness or the things that one needs to forgive that start to loom large once God hooks one onto a topic. But just recently it has felt like there are things with spikes, like those seed cases that stick to one as one walks through a wood, or have to be tugged from the dog’s fur, things that I thought I’d “dealt with” via various QEC and inner healing journaling stuff but that nip at me when I’m not quite noticing.
A thing that not only QEC but other inner trauma type healings talk of doing is to be aware of one’s vagus nerve and how one is reacting – fight, fight, freeze, fawn – and how to bring it back to feeling calm, peaceful and filled with deep joy. Not happiness but contentment and something 100 times deeper than happiness.
But these little sticky seed cases aren’t heavy. The dog can continue his walk when he has them. They don’t slow him down. But these small sticky things that I need to forgive for the millionth time do slow me down. They make me grouchy, which makes me tired, which makes me uncreative. And I really don’t like to be uncreative.
And that for me is my awareness; when I feel uncreative, when I don’t want to write anything at all. Sometimes I write angry pieces which I don’t share but that helps me look at what I need to forgive so I can move onward. We each have different things that show us we are out of sync with the calm, peacefully, pure, safe joy we should be working if we are aware of ourselves. So when we don’t enjoy or want to do the things that make us who we are that is the time when we have to stop, reset our vagus nerve, breath, and forgive – often ourselves for still reacting with that hurt as much as forgiving the person who hurt us.
Forgiveness is NOT something with sharp teeth, which is what I was going to write. Forgiveness is the the true MUST DO that is the only things that is going to keep us in good relationship with others and with ourselves. If I don’t forgive me then I forget who “me” really is.
It isn’t easy forgiving but it is essential but too often we get used to those sticky seeds, to those sharp teeth. Too often we are afraid to brush them off, to release ourselves and others. Fear stops us doing many things but most importantly it stops us being ourselves.
So as we enter into the season of Easter, into Holy Week, whether that is your faith or not, just ponder some of the things that are recorded of what Jesus did – the Ultimate Forgiver.
This photograph of my dog has no relevance to this post – apart from him never being time poor or time rich – but it for one of my readers who told me how much she loves my posts but especially the ones with photos of Renly, who she knows personally!
I was a meeting the other night and there were people there who kept saying they were “time poor“. I had heard the expression before but not really engaged with it. I think what they meant was they were doing lots of things and so were busy.
I response in my head in the meeting was to think that maybe they should be thinking about what they are meant to be doing and asking their hearts if this was what they should be doing. And then my next thing was to want to boast and say that “now I’m healed/healing I am time rich“. But then I realised that both those responses are wrong. I am comparing and being proud. Neither of which is being respectful to the people I was with who are working really hard for my little town.
As I pondered it and did some journaling around my thoughts I realised I often panic that I don’t have time to do things and that this is what is stopping me getting some work that I should have because I’d be great at it. But I am also worried that I won’t have that allusive “enough” time to do all I think I ought to be doing. So in reality I was no better. I still think I could be “time poor“.
So more listening to my heart, listening to God who Created the Whole Universe, listening to the Universe. Then I realised that if I listen to my heart then I do have enough to do each day the things I am meant to do each day – whether that is keep house, run workshops, visit an ill friend down south to relieve her husband, see my mother, have coffee with my friends, be in school to do the things I am great at doing there. I will do what I am meant to do with the energy and time I need to all that.
So not “enough” as in the worrying that there isn’t enough but trusting that each and every day what I choose to do from listening to my heart will be what I am meant to do, and that I will not do too much or too little, will not be too busy, too time poor, but will glide through calmly knowing that I am being what I’m meant to be with enough time, energy, resources, experience, etc that I need. And then like my little dog I can enjoy the moment, seize the day, and live life to the full of who I am and what I love to do.
An aside – too often we see “living life to the full” as being super busy, but I am finding that the more I listen to my heart, to God, to the Universe, the more I am filled with deep joy, deep contentment, deep peace and a freedom to trust, the more I know that I am living life to a fullness that I never had when I was busy.
Sunrise over my local park. Taken by myself Oct 2022
There is some stuff going on in my life and I spent half the night planning my speech to say what I really thought, talk about my hurts, my fears, etc. I felt I had a right to say this. Funny how we are brought up that way. And then go on to do some self improvement stuff which talks to us about firm boundaries, being honest, our rights, etc.
Well for me about 5.30am I felt an almost audible voice asking me why I felt the need to say what I felt, why I needed to put over my point of view when in fact no one has asked for it. So I chewed this over, noticed a few repeated patterns that I thought I’d dealt with, and then asked what I could do to change.
What came to me was Philippians’s 4:7 “The peace of the Lord that transcends all understanding” So being me I journaled around that.
What came up was that that real joy and real peace are there for us no matter what is going on in our lives, no matter what we are feeling. It doesn’t mean that we deny our feelings. Often living in that total joy and peace of God/the Universe we can be more open and honest with ourselves about how we feel. In fact I googled an article around this and the writer said how they go walking with their anxiety rather than trying to hide it, and this was from a piece that started with the Phil 4:7 verse.
How would I describe that total joy and peace? I don’t know. All I can say is that I know it is there. I know I can tap into it whenever I want to, though often I don’t try to – which is when I say what I shouldn’t or do what I shouldn’t and let my fears, issues, self-righteousness, hurt others.
The whole point of something “transcending our understanding” is that it transcends it, which means we cannot and should not try to understand it. What would be the point? It makes no sense to be fearful but at peace, to be grieving but feel deep joy. But then what would be the point of understanding everything?
It is great to have mysteries and as a Christian I do not want to understand all that is God. I do not want to be able to figure God out. Well what would be the point of that?
I have to trust in God with all of my being, not understand God with all my being. I have to let go of my need to sort it all out, of my need to be right all the time. I think if we all lent into a higher power of some sort, let go of our need to control each and every situation, let go of our need to figure the whys and wherefores of everything and just accept that somethings just are.
So today I am accepting that no matter what is going on in my life I am going to walk in a place of peace and joy that is bigger than I am, that I don’t understand, and that is ok.
My dog rolling in the sand on Conwy beach Feb 2022
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.
The wonder of being brought, by God, around a corner and to realize a new road is opening up, perhaps—which He alone knows. And that there is no way of traveling it but in Christ and with Him. This is joy and peace—whatever happens. The result does not matter. I have something to do for Him and, if I do that, everything else will follow. —
A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s True Life, January 23 and 24, 1958
I go through phases of taking photos of the same thing. Paths have been an ongoing theme. I love the nature of paths. The way they lead you onward and how much one puts ones trust in a path. I think this is why this quote jumped out at me. And the whole thing of being at the start of another year, and my husband had said about someone he follows on Facebook had said about a bend in the road.
But it is Merton’s joy that comes through here about the wonder of a new road. With all the changes that have been going on since the start of the pandemic, which for us in the UK was March 2020, we are tired on new roads. We are tired of walking roads we have no map for. We really do not want to go round another corner and see something new opening up.
Yet Merton talks of wonder and trust, of joy, and of not worrying about the results. And whatever our religious beliefs most of us do fight worry, which the media encourages.
I wonder how different life would feel if instead of being fearful about the new road, instead of hoping the new road will be similar to something we knew, we could step out in joy and wonder, in trust of each other and something bigger than ourselves, not fearing what is to come, letting go of needing to control the situation.
I’m not talking of not doing anything about the injustices of the world, or ignoring climate change, or pretending everything in the garden is rosy. I’m talking about having eyes that are open about what is going on and of wanting to do something to change, but in a joyful, wonder-filled, trusting way
I think we would feel more peaceful, many of our nations mental health worries would ease, and I do wonder if actually we would then have more energy and confidence to really change things instead of living in fear?
Sunrise photographed by myself on a morning dog walk
I wrote an article during our “lockdown Christmas” last year about my feelings regarding winter and slowing down. I also wrote an article in 2017 about the Winter Solstice and how the sun stands still for the few days from solstice to Christmas day. So it looks as if I have a bit of an affinity with this time of year.
I do love the roll into winter. I love the ways the days get rapidly shorter and I have to rethink my dog walking times because by 4pm it isn’t fun to walk around the park. Though I also love that if I can get out before 7.30am I can watch the sun rise over the trees in the park. This is a time when I just pray out loud giving glory to God. Christine talked about the Wow factor of Advent and for me every sunrise is a “Wow!” factor.
This morning I was blown away by starting my walk only lit by street-lighting, but then seeing the clouds start to get tinged with light and come into definition. Even though the sun still hadn’t fully risen by the time I got home the world had come into definition. That to me is so awesome. It truly is “new every morning” and I can then remember “Great is his faithfulness” [Lamentations 3:23] So no matter what my mood when I start my walk I come to a place of being with God and giving my morning over before I return home.
I noticed this last year and again this year, people are putting their outdoor Christmas lights on earlier and earlier. I know some of it has been said that because with the pandemic, and other things, life is bleak so people need lights, but the posts by Liz of Pocket Fuel have made me think. In the daily emails for the first week of December she explored how we seem to no longer embrace the darkness as our ancestors would have and how from that we miss out on things – like trusting God in the darkness.
It got me thinking about our ancestors, and I’m talking pre-Industrial revolution, would use the winter season was a time for gathering the family, of sharing the tales that made up their culture. This is when the stories were retold about heroes, monsters, family history, how the earth came into being, etc. But now we have made the winter, especially this run up to Christmas so busy, whether that is rushing round buying, partying, Church services. It is all busy, busy, busy, when in fact our bodies are crying out for us to slow down and the next generation needs to hear our stories, our history, our faith tales.
I am lucky in that in my freelancing work I have being healed of the need to see planning and money as the driving force and have moved more into trusting God to provide so I am more able to roll with the seasons and the daylight hours. But I still have had to think through how not to get sucked into being busy in church, feeling guilty for not saying Yes to everything, for making a quieter way. It isn’t easy. It is countercultural. It takes focus but I was trying.
So as I allow this season and this shortest day to enfold me I listen to my heart – because it is my heart that connects me with God – and then ask my heart what it is thinking and feeling. I breath and pray and then feel safe. And I also want to learn all this so I can take the slowness of the darker season into the spring and summer.
It is the start of the Celtic Advent. Celtic Advent gives 40 days run up to Christmas and then on into Epiphany. I like it because it gives time to reflect and ponder without some of the same intensity as the Anglican Advent time of just that mad December rush to Christmas.
In today’s reading Christine Sine encourages one to “choose joy”. As I looked out of my study window to the gold and oranging leaves of the cherry tree, my constant companion through all the seasons I think it is easy to choose joy today. It is easy to choose joy when there is beauty just outside my window, when I can go and walk in the beautiful park ten minutes from my house and enjoy the changing colours of the glorious autumn season. But how does one choose joy when life isn’t so beautiful?
Yet even when there is beauty around one still has to choose whether to see the glorious colours or to see that they signify impending death. As this season turns around again it is easy sometimes to see what hasn’t been done – the minimal progress at COP26, the impending next covid wave, etc ,etc. Or the path that was blocked or the job that hasn’t happened or the relationship that has gone awry.
But what is joy anyway? The Bible says “The joy of the Lord is your strength” Note it is the Lord’s joy not you trying to be happy clappy that is your strength. And I think that’s the depth of and truth of it all whether you believe in God or not, that you don’t have to build up that joy yourself but just need to turn to it, to accept it.
I read this from a blog post this morning. It is from Alcoholic’s Anonymous, which I seem to be coming across more and more these days in things I’m reading and I am sharing it with the young Youthshedz people I am working with
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
Call it what you wish – peace, joy, or as the Youthshedz girls were telling me the other day, hope – but you have to choose to walk in it. It is there all the time just waiting for you to reach for it, just waiting for you to accept it.
I’m learning a lot from these young people who have gone through so so much at such a young age and yet they have chosen hope. Ok so not all the time and they have down days and bad days, which is fine. If we are honest then we all have those days, though maybe not so openly, but they make an effort to choose hope/joy/peace.
So as the tree outside my window will soon cast its leaves to the ground and stand bare before me, even though the joy/hope looks like it has gone, I will, no matter what this next busy season throws at me, choose joy, choose peace, choose love, choose hope. It isn’t going to be easy but if these young people can do it then I certainly can.
From Abergwyngregyn nature reserve looking towards Beaumaris. Photo taken this morning, 16th August, by myself
My third day of thoughts on my version of The Lord’s Prayer. Today is “your kingdom come, your will be done” to this I always add “in my life and my world.”
Is this a selfish, egocentric attitude? I think it depends on how you view yourself and your connections. For me I see myself as connected to others who in turn are connected to others. For instance, lady in the park told me that the random conversation we had the other day, which brought back memories of her going to Paris with her late husband, made her day and that she was able to cope with a shop assistant who was a bit stressed. I didn’t even meet the stressed shop assistant but my connection with a fellow dog walker supported that shop assistant. And who knows what the kind words from the from the dog walker brought to the shop assistant and so on and so on
Also I am coming to believe more and more that the energy I give out – whether negative or positive, fearful or safe, joyful or angry – affects those around me and again then affects those they come into contact with. It is a bit like my understanding of chaos theory – of how a butterfly flapping its wings in a forest can lead to a hurricane somewhere else in the world! OK for all the scientists who follow me this is a my simplified version!!! 🙂
Maybe me being kind to people and doing my best to walk with an energy of trust, peace and joy, can lead, one person at a time, to peace in the Middle East, which if boiled down to its basic level is people being afraid of people and what they can lose.
I suppose this comes full circle back to believing I have enough, which can even lead to knowing I have lived long “enough” as have those I love. [Of course I don’t want those I love to die in pain but I have to be ready to let them go when the universe says “enough” on their time here – but that’s for another blog!!!] But if I believe I am living in “enough” and that I am walking out God’s Kingdom and Will in my life/my world, then I do not need to fear lose or fear getting it wrong, which brings me back to “Forgiveness” of myself and others.
Makes you wonder sometimes if the Lord’s Prayer was written upside down and should have started with “get ready to forgive yourself and others, trust there is enough to go round, and believe you are doing your best to work out God’s Will and Kingdom in your life and that this will affect others”.
Misquote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar but seemed appropriate for this post.
March is a weird month for me because over the years lots of stuff has happened in it. To name but a few – it is the anniversary of not just physical deaths of friends and family but also of the loss of dreams, of anniversaries of heartbreak and relationship ends for both my children, which if you’re a parent you will know this hurts your heart too. But it is also the anniversary of when I got my cute little dog, when I met with God in an amazing, never to be dismissed encounter, when my son was born. So the month of March is a bitter sweet month. But then isn’t that life.
Life isn’t all good or all bad. Even in this pandemic I would say each person would be hard pressed to not be able to find a good time, even if it is just something small, but our newspaper headlines would like us not to see things that way. And I’m not saying things haven’t been tough. For me just entering March each year is tough and it was also why I went into panic mode last March rushed to “rescue” my daughter and bring her back to live in my house, was scared that we would run out of food. It wasn’t just the pandemic but the memories heaped upon it. This year I am calmer because I’ve recognised this is what my body does so I do almost remind it to “beware the ides of March”. Then I can work with my panics and my negative feelings and keep my body, mind and emotions not so much in check, because hiding one’s feelings is dangerous to both your physical and mental health. But I make sure I don’t get caught up in flight, fight or freeze and acknowledge the past in all its hues.
I’m not saying it is wrong to remember these events. It is good to have some time set aside to remember those people and dreams that have gone, but I do believe one should also remember the good in them too. I know sometimes that can be hard when the death has been from a long drawn out illness or mental health issue, or if the relationship or dream ended painfully. That does make it hard. But there is a gap for light in everything no matter how horrendous.
I read a few books last year and this about refugees and people in war torn countries. These books aren’t gloomy. They are honest about the hardness of the situation but they also see the light and joy in things. These are not books I come away depressed from but come away having learned something of another culture, another way of life, that I would not encounter in my daily life. The things I read are much harder than what I’ve been through. No matter what are papers say we are blessed to live in the UK. And yes there are things here that need to change, justices that need to be sorted, I’m not saying that. Same as I’m not saying that one shouldn’t grieve for those we’ve lost. What I am saying is that we need to see the blessings in the sadness, see the joy in the sorrow, see the light in the darkness.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Normally I would do my end of year review to coincide with Christmas cards I was sending, whether physical or electronic, but this year I have decided to wait until 31st December to post, and am even tempted to wait until midnight just in case. It is not that I am fearful but this has been an “unprecedented” year.
At the time I would normally have done this post I was still laid up with bruised ribs from falling off that horse though was starting to plan what I would write, and I suppose even Different Christmas was a lead up to that. But then just as I was in the planning stages for that my husband got shingles and has been very sore with that. Then on Saturday 19th Dec Wales announced that all was change for Christmas and we were going into lockdown again – though from the volume of traffic I would say that only means that pubs and cafes have now closed. Not sure if I can see much other difference on the roads. It is definitely not back to April’s sparse traffic volume. But then on Sunday my daughter announced that she had tested positive to covid and so, even though she wasn’t coming up here for the holidays it did mean she was going to have to spend it home alone! All this in just a week!
This has been the strangest of years. Even to the point that our cat went from eating biscuits to demanding that we feed her cat meat from a tin. She now has meat twice a day and ignores the biscuits that sit waiting for her to be hungry enough. If it hadn’t been for the local cat rescue places being closed all the tins that had been in the cupboard for the last few years would have gone to them but now she’s eaten them all.
Talking of pets – our crazy rabbit died in the summer, happily of a possible heart attack whilst he was sunbathing before begining yet another digging project. He was buried inside his own warren of tunnels that he had constructed over the four years he had been living here. He is still very missed and the amount of veg peelings in our food recycling bin has increased.
As with everyone 2020 started normally enough, though it was odd for us because my husband chose to stay home for New Year’s instead of going to a youth hostel with old university friends. So actually even the start of the year was different for us with us being together when we woke on 2020. We went away as always for our wedding anniversary at the end of January, which was followed by my husband going off for a week of intensive Welsh learning on the Llyn Peninsular. He managed to get away climbing with friends in Scotland at the start of March, but by the time he went away then things were starting to change and covid was being muttered about. We had two Airbnb guests, both in the medical profession, who went from saying it was nothing to worry about to slowly getting more and more concerned about it, to our guest from Burma having to cut short his stay so he got home before all airports were closed.
I was supposed to go on my regular March writing retreat but felt uneasy about going which was just as well because suddenly things got serious. So instead of being in Gwynedd I went Cardiff to bring my daughter to stay with us when the pubs closed. We bought her some walking boots the day before the country went into full lockdown. We thought we were going to be walking all over North Wales, but then the 5 mile rule was introduced and we finished up doing lots of walks around where we live. We have seen my daughter more this year, probably a good 4 months of the year, than we have since she went off to university about 7 years ago. I picked her up yesterday, now that she is over her coovid isolation time and will spend New Year with us and stay until this lockdown lifts. So even though we have seen so much more of her this year when it comes to everyone else – my son and our mothers and our friends – we’ve seen them less than normal.
My husband changed jobs at the start of lockdown and has now been working for his new company for 8 months and never seen the inside of his office or met any of his colleagues face to face. We are so grateful for our lovely big house and him being able to work upstairs in his own office. But his is the only work going on in the house because, with all the guidelines and restrictions, it is not safe to run our house as an Airbnb rental home for the time being. Read more about that on Humility. And since not having guests coming and going it has changed how I see the house and what it is for. For now I’m not making any decisions how things will look regarding Airbnb and room rentals in 2021, but I do know I see this place much more as a family home now than a business.
We did manage to get away for a flying visit to Somerset to see our mums and a couple of friends at the beginning of August and my son and his fiancee came up to us for a long weekend in mid August. Both times we were blessed with great weather. And we managed 6 days in Northumberland in late September, though because Northumbeland went into tier 3 we were not able to see one friend who had moved there a couple of years ago, and also a friend’s 50th wedding anniversary party was cancelled. But we did manage 6 days of walking, reading, and resting together.
As well as Airbnb all my work has stopped – no more writing groups, no more schools work, no more workshops in the library. All very strange. But I have been doing a lot of my own writing and a few of my blogs from here are being published on Godspacelight.com which is quite exciting. I have also been working with a young illustrator and we have a book called TheLittle Yellow Boat which is with BumbleBee Publishing in the process of being put together and published later in 2021. I will tell more about that once it is out in the big wide world. My plans for 2021 are to work on more short stories and other ideas and of course to blog more. I do not want The Little Yellow Boat to be my only publications. I have also been working towards an MA in Celtic Studies and have loved the modules about the Mabinogion, especailly the Four Branches. I am thinking of doing some stores around the women from the Four Branches.
Every year we do not know what is going to happen, but I think 2021 is probably the one where we have the least idea. Will the vaccine prove effective enough to bring back “normal” life? Will we have enjoyed some of the changes and not want “normal”? For some their business will never be the same again. Many will be bankrupt. For others there plans will be delayed and will be able to move forward a year or two later. But also within that not knowing are things we do have control over. I plan to continue with the Quantum Energy Counselling healing work I’ve been doing. I will work on my own writing and develop a body of work and look at being published. I will meet up with people when I walk with my dog and have great conversations. I will email my friends. And I will carry on reading. All these I have control over. As to whether I’ll start Airbnb rental again or whether I’ll be able to restart writing workshops and schools work, that I have no control over, so will hold lightly. Also I do have control over how I behave towards what is going on around me and I hope I can hold Joy and Hope in the right place and walk as God wants me to through whatever is thrown my way.
Aspirational Adventures 