Writing Wednesdays: Inner Love and Walking in Faith

Writing can be a tool to reach deep inside yourself and bring small, dark hidden things to light. It's one of our greatest gifts as people to be able to bring ourselves healing, even if it often seems that the only "healing" can come from outside - from parents, from romantic partners, from friends, even from mediums, pastors, rabbis, or from the spiritual world.

The truth is that while the people in our world can help us, love us, support us, and hold us, our comfort and self love comes from exactly there - ourselves!

But how do we strike up a conversation with the weirdest, darkest, most hurt parts of ourselves? We talk to those parts. We hold them. We ask for help again and again, hopefully knowing that we are always walking with something larger that holds us.

Here's a list of questions to get you writing and thinking along these lines.

1) What do I need right now?

2) Do I feel supported within myself?

3) Do I feel supported within my close personal relationships?

4) If I don't, can I take responsibility for my own fears?

5) Can I see my own goodness? What does it look like?

6) Can I hold the parts of me that feel "dark" -- the parts that get angry, mad, hurt, ashamed. What do I do with those lonely parts? Do I hold them? Do I pretend they aren't happening? Do I push myself through my feelings and "try" to be "more spiritual?"

7) Just for today, just for this minute, how would it feel to unconditionally accept myself? The big parts, the small parts, all of the parts?

8) Set out tea and cookies for the small scared parts or the furious angry parts. What does this part look like? Does he or she have a name? How does he or she feel? Can I let this part of you simply have the floor?

8) What kind of space do you yearn to create? What kind of relationship with yourself?

9) What is your intention for the rest of your day?

10) What kind of hope and longing do you intend to fulfill tomorrow?

May you have long and deep conversations with all parts of yourself.

Creative Writing Prompt: Rainy Morning and Staying Put

[caption id="attachment_160" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Windy Tree Thursday"][/caption]

How often do we ignore a change in the weather? Not open our doors and windows? I do it plenty.

One thing can change your day. The heat of the sun. Cold rain. The smell of dirt as we plant something in the garden.

 

I began the day carefully and slowly, questions building in my head as they do every morning. I get dressed on the second to last day of vacation and come downstairs. I'm prepared to go out jogging in the newly windy Florida day. Instead, I read a book, I lounge. I lazily take advantage of the time my university is off school.

I gave up running. A storm kicked up. The kind of windy, barely-supressed, rainy, flesh-tingling storm that opens gardens wider and makes you feel a little more alive.

I did something I haven't done since starting to revamp this house. I opened the back windows to catch the Florida storm. (We had to commit to new windows a few months ago. They were needed, thirty years of water and wear had destroyed the old ones.)

I turned the small couch around so its facing the back garden. I pulled back the drapes and opened the back door. It feels stiff and new in my hand, the factory newness reflecting off every shiny surface of it.

Now, the cold, clear air blows through the living room. The Bougainvillea tree is scattering dark purple petals over the yard. Some flower fragments have danced their way up to the closed screen door. Every time another gust of wind comes through, I can feel it all over.My nose feels it and responds accordingly. Twitch. Twitch. Breathe.

I can smell the cold and the rain through the open door. A neighbor is smoking and even though he is smoking in his yard, just next door, I can smell a much-watered down version of smoke. Every few seconds the wind pulls the sheer curtains tight against the screen and then they dance back, flapping wildly.

If I hadn't turned the couch around, I would have missed this. The smell, the cold rain. Glorious. I'm not thinking about my questions or my worries - or the how, what, why, how can I, what can I, where.

I'm here.

Creative Writing Prompt: Nature and Me

1. When was the last time you connected with nature?


2. Where were you?


3. How did it feel?


4. Did it change your day for the better or worse? How?


5. What colors were active in nature that day? Describe them.