poetry

agency-experiences (that is, teaching)

connecting with God

standing on (as?) a bridge between people and the divine

academia: reading, writing, talking about reading & writing, writing some more…

letting time flow as itself, not hurrying it (or grinding into stasis)

listening well with people

knowing across my four dimensions of knowing

learning to hold our rudder

**

I went to spiritual direction today. I’m experimenting, and using intuition (which might just be wordlessness), to draw out what sorts of behaviors and even habits might best support me as the kind of God’s-person I’m becoming. I suspect spiritual direction may offer a grounding practice I need, a separate set of ears and eyes and heart that can discern and ask good questions.

The classic question: where do you see God in all of this?

It’s great: I already know my director from school, where she shepherded groups. This isn’t group, now. But having a history means my being able to dive in rather than build up a structure of context. Anyway.

I brought what I’m carrying everywhere right now — discerning the shape of my calling and my next footsteps. Nothing novel; it’s taking the kairos time I anticipated it would, even as I want it to hustle along.

I said: God’s getting me to practice patience. She said: This liminal space seems like an awful lot for just “patience.” I laughed: Maybe that’s just by the way, like how my trainer is always adding stretching exercise because otherwise I get too stiff to bend.

I said: the things that are unfurling… and I held my bunched hand palm-up, peeling first one finger, then another. I thought of chrysanthemums, all those digit-like petals together, though I’m describing the motion of daisies, or roses.

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I can play with “starting to bloom,” or maybe even “bloom where I am planted” though that whole ‘where’ thing is not tethered to anything right now, and if I’m blooming at this moment it’s either as a slip or an air-plant. I’m practicing being okay with this, too.

At any rate, I have these petals I can feel — too many to be feet for a compass! she laughed — and [she reminded | I agreed] we can start watching them unfold on their own schedule, in their own order.

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Some are given the gift of a single vision, and a heart like an arrow. Some are given absurd abundance, “a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over […] poured into your lap,” and from there have to understand what to bake first.

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(That’s from Luke 6:38. About something else, and also maybe a bit of this.)