Dear Friends,
Happy New Moon! Only another week to the Spring Equinox —- the year moves on, the heavens spin. The pandemic continues. Sigh.
I’m in Chapter Seven of THE BOOK. It’s about Dreams, nighttime and daytime, and the stories we tell ourselves. So much I want to include —- so much I have to leave out! The Book is already close to 200 pages, and I have 3 1/2 more chapters to do. I’m sure editing will cull lots; but on the other hand, I may remember way more that I wanted to include.
The whole book, Making Meaning, Making Soul is about the inner life, and how cultivating an inner life clarifies our values, our power, and our commitment to creating a world where all of us can have a home and all that we need to thrive. So, cultivate your inner life and change the world!!! We need more than superficial changes or new laws or environmental legislation here and there. Our challenges are great, and things may get much worse, to the point of breakdown of all systems, before we rebuild from the bottom up. We can’t navigate the future with a mindset of the past; it’s guaranteed not to be sustainable. So I’m hoping the book will have encouragement and instruction to use even the hardest of times to grow, cultivate, and then curate the world we want to live in. High hopes.
On a personal note, my old ways of being, of writing, are not sustainable in my life now. I used to be able to encourage myself (make myself? force myself?) to just sit down and crank it out. The writing came out good enough, sometimes even quite good, and the job got done. But I don’t live like that anymore: I don’t WANT to, and my dear body won’t let me! I have to write this book with the same spirit that I am advocating throughout the book: to live reflectively, to be exquisitely conscious of myself and my world, choosing my actions in the light of what I can do to help, and what I can do to care for myself in the same way I would want any person, any beloved child to be cared for.
That means transforming my relationship with time, and that’s just not an easy thing to do! I have to step out of self-imposed deadline, step away from cracking the whip and driving myself to produce (to produce the book and the half dozen other “very important” projects I’m involved in!) To trust that treating myself lovingly WILL translate into a fountain of abundance filling up and spilling over, even if the fountain is a very small one. Productivity, speed, greed, and striving are false gods, though you wouldn’t know it from our culture, nor the evening news. My social media feed and email bring more and more and more, and much of it is important and even helpful, due to my skill in choosing good people, good organizations, and good scholarship to hear from. In trying to get a handle on all this, I haven’t written on THE BOOK for a week —- and that’s actually been a very good thing! I’ll get back into a good rhythm soon.
Meanwhile, we carry on, in all senses of “carry on”, living, loving, resting, investing our energy into nourishing ourselves and others. Tell me, what is your relationship with time? How do you live a reflective, intentional life?
Much love and many blessings to you,
Cat
