Writing Wednesday: The Universe and You

[caption id="attachment_23" align="alignleft" width="224" caption="Spirituality is an Intensely Personal Road. "][/caption]

 

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In honor of this week's Writing Wednesday, let's talk about the eternal divine within. I believe the sacred is in you, and learning how to connect to our deeply personal and individual spiritualities is, I believe, a lifelong and intensely personal process.

1. Do you believe in a Higher Power? If yes, does it have a name? Do you call it God? Goddess? Jesus? Luck? Chance? Fate?

2. What is your personal sacred code?

3. What does talking to a Higher Power mean to you, if you pray to one? Do you call your communication prayer? Does it have another name?

4. Describe the face of your own inner divine being. What does it look like? What is the feeling associated with it?

5. What is your favorite communication or "prayer" with the divine? Some of my favorites are "I'm lost", "Help", "F-- This!", or "Thank You."

Some book recommendations are

The Feminine Face of God by Sherry Ruth Anderson and Patricia Hopkins: Anderson and Hopkins explore women's views of spirituality, including testimony from nuns, Buddists, pagans, female rabbis, and women of all kinds, creeds, and belief systems. From the questioning stay-at-home mom to the woman leaving her relationship after fifty years, the book delves into our eternal questions: If God is me, what am I doing here? What is meaning? What applies to me?

The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie: Self-help household name Melody Beattie wrote this as a daily book of meditations to help us let go, find health, and trust our inner timing. (Melody Beattie also gave the children's book I edited rave reviews. To learn more about April Claxton's wonderful Goodnight Just the Same, click here.)

The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris: The poet Kathleen Norris went to live with Benedictine monks for two years. "Here, she compresses these years of experience into the diary of one liturgical year, offering observations on subjects ranging from celibacy to dealing with emotions," says Amazon.

Women, Food, and God: Geneen Roth was featured on Oprah for this one and it's fantastic. She connects our intimate relationship to food to our intimate spiritual relationship. Wonderful meditation on the ways that our relationship to food parallels our own abundance or perceived lack of  support from a higher power.

The ways that we feel into - or don't feel into - our individual paths can often make or break us in small ways. Here's to loving and accepting our own personal paths, whatever they look like and whatever questions they pose.

And here's a song, "Universe and You" by KT Tunstall.



For any Gray's Anatomy fans out there, here's the "very special musical episode version" that aired last week.  Dr. Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw) sings to her partner Dr. Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) , now in a coma. (Who was a weepy mess? That would be me.)



Love

Marissa

Manifestation Mondays: Music and Mediation

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The theme from one of my favorite movies.

Turn it up.
Listen.
Notice your thoughts. Just notice them.
Relax for five whole minutes.

Fun Fridays: YAWP and Perseverance

[caption id="attachment_152" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Each Book is a Ray of Light. Someone created it."][/caption]I got a rejection letter today - that's two this week. It happens and I've learned that the stack of published stuff outweighs the pile of unpublished. And I love what I do. And I keep going.

Why?

I keep going because I live for the sounds of words, rippling through the air like music. I love words. I love how each word is a poem is like a musical note, and the entire thing forms a symphony. I do this because books, words, novels, and stories are our history. They are proof of our humanity, our shared passions and secrets, our hopes and our ordinary days. When you write a story, even if you are the only person to see it, or if you have a readership of millions, that's your heart, your love, your baby, your truth out there in the world. And your voice, my voice, our voices, our collective voices - they matter.

I began to look for inspiration. Here is what I found.

1) Finding your creative nerve is important. In this fantastic scene from Dead Poets' Society (1989) Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) inspires shy Todd (Ethan Hawke) to find his "barbaric yawp." That's the first step to creating. You have a YAWP, yes you do. Let it out!



"I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world." - Walt Whitman

2)Don't give up. Show your moxie! Rock and roll legend Joan Jett (after she quit the Runaways) was rejected by 23 (that's 23!) record labels before getting picked up. As a reminder, Jett would be the woman who did this.



3) Believe in Magic: Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling worked as a temp for eight years and wrote in between making copies and getting coffee for her boss. She was considering taking a job teaching French when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was published. She is now one of the richest women in England, if not the world.



4) Don't Give Up (It's Worth Repeating):Horror megastar Stephen King worked as a English teacher, getting paid a whopping $19,000 a year and  living in a trailer with his wife Tabitha and their first child before his first novel Carrie (1976) was published. Now? He's Stephen King. You've heard of him, right?



5) Follow the Beat of Your Own Drummer: Katherine Hepburn is now seen as an icon of style, strength and women's rights. Yet in the late 30s, she was labeled "box office poison." Then she did The Philadelphia Story and, hello fame. (First she performed on Broadway and bought the rights. Smart!)



6) Be Yourself. There Is Room In The World: Leonardo DiCaprio was told by an agent that his name was too "ethnic" and he would never be famous unless he changed it to something like "Lenny Williams." DiCaprio is now one of the largest names in Hollywood and I assume that agent is slinging hash in a diner somewhere.

Here's Lenny Williams - I mean, Leonardo DiCaprio - in Inception.



Tips and Writing Prompts

1) Keep going.

2) If you love what you do, you're already a success. - my dad (and someone else before him, I'm sure.) What do you love?

3) Keep going some more. Where do you stall? Where do you start?

4) Read about people who did what you are trying to do. You will no doubt find out the several ways that this person was rejected or told by others that he or she couldn't do it/didn't have the chops/wasn't enough. This is only true if YOU accept it.

5) If you're a writer, walk into a bookstore and see every single book in there as one success story. If you're an artist, every painting that you look at for the next week is one ray of light. Don't think about the competition, the economy, or all the "reasons" you have to stop right here and now.

6) Yawp. Loudly. When was the last time you did this?

In the 1977 film Julia, about the life of playwright Lillian Hellman (played by Jane Fonda), her lover, writer Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards) says to her as she battles writer's block, "It's a great time to stop. No one will ever know that you existed." Ouch. Thanks, Dashiell. (Hammett may have been the hard-drinking granddaddy of hard boiled mysteries such as The Maltese Falcon, but I imagine he was not known for his breathtaking sensitivity.)

Still, what he meant was that no one will come to your door and politely ask you if you are ready to embrace your YAWP, if you are ready to live your honest life, or if you are ready to follow your dreams. YOU have to YAWP. I promise. You must do it. You must find that place inside you that believes with all of your heart that you have something worth saying - and that it is worth it for others to hear. And even if they don't want to hear, you commit to saying it. It is your truth and your choice, always.

It's your move and the world is waiting. More importantly, you are waiting. You are. You are waiting to step into your truth and your creative expression.

7) When was the last time you allowed yourself creative expression? Cooking? Singing? Painting? Acting? Writing? How did it feel? How did your body feel?

Go for it.

I wish us all the loudest and fiercest of YAWPS this weekend.

Love.

Blazing Blog and UK Band Bloc Party's "Mercury in Retrograde"

It's that time again. Bob and I are back! (Due to some now resolved computer issues, but better late than never!) We talk about the Princess of Disks (Page of Coins), Judgement, and 4 of cups. Click below to see how these cards impact your week.



Also, here's a musical accompaniment to Mercury in Retrograde! As of tomorrow, August 20, we'll be in Virgo Mercury Retrograde. (In order to read more about it, go here.) I love this song - it's rare that bands talk about astrology in their songs, but the lyrics to this one are pretty dead on. No, this is NOT a good time to sign a lease or find a new love - or start anything new.

Turn it up to eleven.



Til next time,

Marissa

(This video belongs to Bloc Party and was posted by jimbodoteleven . The copyright, the lyrics, and the song all are Bloc Party's.)