Tag: walking my dog

Categories
oughts passion

My Passions

One of my passions – encouraging other people to enjoy creative writing – whether adults in libraries or community centres, or children in school. Check out more of what I do with writing groups on my Barefoot At The Kitchen Table website

In Christine Sine’s newsletter to those of us who write for Godspacelight she talked about writing into her passion. This is probably one of the bests prompts I’ve had in ages. I have tried writing what I ought to write. I even set up a Substack account to write about writing for well-being but it’s failed. Why? Because, much as I love free writing for my own well-being, I wasn’t writing into my passion. I was trying to be something I wasn’t. I even tried putting in a regular structure to when I blogged but I’m afraid that isn’t me.

How often to do we do that – try to be something we are not? Whether it is in what we write or what we do? I think of many times when I have done something – job or ministry – that is so significant but isn’t me. Too many times to remember. It could even be something I’m good at, have talents in, but it isn’t my passion. I suppose if one jargoned it up I could say it wasn’t “my calling.”

As I’ve got older I’ve learned more and more not just what my skills and talents are but what I am passionate about. I love people, though I need time alone with a book too. If I’m honest my perfect day would be to go for a dog walk, coffee and breakfast with a friend or family member, have a rolling, random conversation that covers deep and meaning as well as trivial and silly; come home and write a blog piece on something that either the conversation has trigger or that was buzzing in my head; and finish the afternoon on the couch have a read of a good book, then maybe some intense Netflix drama with a glass of red wine to finish the day. Somewhere in that I’d like to ponder writing a short story or flash fiction, though maybe never get to write it; I’d like to email someone I enjoy writing to; run a writing workshop where I encourage others to get the most from putting pen to paper; and probably free write or journal myself.

But I can get into thinking I “ought to” write X, Y or Z; I “ought to” be connecting with a certain person or group and “ought to” be doing something with them. But that is my “oughts and shoulds” and not my passion coming through.

I’ve just read Timothy Keller’s The Prodigal God in which he talks of the older brother attitude being the one that says “its not fair” when God doesn’t do as we think they should do because we were “good Christians”. My “ought to” comes, I think, from a place that is where I’ve decided what a “good Christian” or a “good writer” would/should do. It isn’t coming from a place of my passion.

I think for all of us there are times when we do not run with our passions for many reasons; a need to fit in, a fear of missing out, having been told by a parental figure that life isn’t meant to be about fun, or whatever. I’m sure we all, if we allow ourselves to really hear our hearts, can come up with many reasons why we don’t follow our passions in work, in writing, in church stuff, in life in general. All of them have some truth in them but remember the devil goes around like a angel of light. The one who keeps us away from our true selves does it subtly not overtly. If it was overtly we would notice and rise above it. But it is filled with limited truths and comes from people who do care for us and want the best for us. But it is still lies if it keeps us from our passions and our true selves.

I’m grateful to all the healing that I’ve received so I can hear God clearly, hear my heart clearly, and be bold enough to step out into my passions. I’m also bold enough now to walk away from when I’ve try to do something that looks good but isn’t me; when I’ve done an “ought”. But this has come about because I know God loves me unconditionally all the time – not just when I get it right/write 🙂

Below are some pictures of some of my other passions. I do need to take more photos of coffee with my friends too

Categories
2020 vision apocalyptic

Apocalyptic Times

Llyn Crafnant 3rd March 2024 photographed by myself

Yes apocalyptic can look as much like a sun-kissed Welsh llyn [lake] as it can those “end of the world” movies some of us love to watch.

Do you get it sometimes when you’re listening to something and someone says something and you want to jump up and down and tell the world? This is my space to tell the world – or at least you my dear subscribers. Some posts I really really hope get out there to loads of people and some I’m a bit embarrassed by and some, like this one, I am writing because I cannot contain what is going on in my head and cannot yet find a way of bringing it up when out dog walking 🙂

I was listening to Drew Jackson [yes I have been banging on about Drew and the podcast on Godspace but, for me, it has been amazing]. There is one point, in talking about his poetry that he calls it apocalyptic, and then says that we are living in apocalyptic times. He then explains that, for him, apocalyptic times mean “unveiling times” and not so much as we’ve come to think of them as “end of the world as we know it times” – though it is a bit like that too. But it is much more about things, structures, being unveiled.

I was so excited because I had written around this from 2020 onwards in various forms, and keep saying to my husband when another “unveiling” of something corrupt comes on the news that, I think, the whole of the 2020s – until the end of 2029 – will be a time of unveiling, a time of relooking at things and saying “that’s not right” – governments, health care, education, racism, sexism, gender issues, climate change, nature issues, homelessness, poverty, materialism, the whole Israel/Palestine, Russia/Ukraine, and more that are not coming to mind at the moment. And more that I’m sure you can name.

This is what the book of Revelation talks about, what Jesus talked about when he said about the end times. It may not mean the world is going to end and we will all go off to heaven, or wherever. It means, as Drew said, apocalyptic times are times of unveiling, times of revealing what’s wrong in our systems. A time to change.

At the event I was at last week one of the women speaking said about how things are changing with regard to clairvoyants and how the understanding of spirituality is changing. She said how she believed that the control of religious structures was lifting and people are starting to explore different ways of being. All the way through that day there was an understanding that people are starting to realise that we buzz with energy, and that we do affect others by our energy and other people’s energy affects us. A lot of QEC is about changing your energy as you are healed from your traumas.

Again these things are unveilings, are changes, are seeing things that were there all along but were hidden. As Christians we need to make sure we don’t stay in our safe boxes but that we get rebellious, get out there and explore what is being unveiled. Get out there and really live in these apocalyptic times without fear. I believe it is what God talks of in the Bible but there has been a fear about it. Instead we need to view it as exciting, as change, as seeing things differently.

Also the reason for the above photo is that the sun still shines, the lakes are still beautiful, families still go out and walk their dogs. Things being unveiled does not mean the end but the in-between space before we go into a new beginning.

But again for me personally the most exciting thing from all this was that Drew was saying what I had been thinking. So if he is and I am and things on Christine’s Liturgical Rebels podcasts are saying things then … let’s be awake and aware and responsive.

Categories
forgiveness freedom

Forgiveness Part Two

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.