Project: 30 Days of Thoughtful

Project: 30 Days of Thoughtful

I have always cared about helping people change the way they think. It’s like a scientist setting off a chemical reaction – the beauty of what emerges is both planned and organic. At best, changing the way you think is a chain reaction that enables you to see and engage with the world differently, to wrestle and live differently and to find your way to a more authentic self. Living into that authentic self matters, because the world needs you and I, to be our fullest expression. We each have something to offer the world and each other.

Often it is through pain or unexpected circumstances, transition and brokenness that we find the path to growth. These are the moments we become resilient as much as learn resilience. There are plenty of tools to help through that process, that I have used myself in the quest for wisdom. Books, therapists, mentors, guides. Exercise and meditation.

But it’s the moments when I find myself needing to take a deep breath that I need something small, digestible but hopeful and pragmatic to center me again. Just to help me re-engage my mind and be thoughtful for a minute. But it has to be gritty and real. There’s no room for trite in my life and probably not in yours. We’ve seen and experienced too much, right?

And that’s where this project was born. I was looking for something that I could read for 2 minutes in the morning or in a coffee break that would help me continue to keep growing but that really spoke to me.

A long time ago, I was a minister. That was my job, curating experiences and opportunities for people to engage spiritually, intellectually and emotionally with the world around them. While it’s no longer my job, it is still my vocation – to care for people, the whole of them. The all of your messy, chaotic and beautiful self.

So here’s my offering – a short journey for 30 days into Thoughtful, from September 1 – September 30th, 2017.

I’ll send you an email with a reflection from my private journals, this blog and lessons I’ve learned from wise advisors and mentors on the way. And if it helps you, then share it. You can read more about Thoughtful here or subscribe below.

Please share this with others who may also be encouraged or find it useful.

 

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A Theology of Rain.

A Theology of Rain.

Every so often a window blows open in the wind and rain lands in unwelcome places – the fresh laundry pile, the pile of books beside the bed, the pot plant. We shield ourselves from rain in the construction of wood, concrete and glass over our daily lives, but sometimes a crack appears in the ceiling, our umbrellas turn inside out or we get caught by surprise.

We hustle to open our umbrellas while clambering out of cars on our way to the office or the grocery store. We try to avoid the rain, to escape the wet. Why this aversion of skin to rain? Why do we run from it?

There was no shelter on the path I walked home from school and I hated the plastic rain coats we used to wear. Hated them with a passion so during winter and spring, it was nothing to arrive home soaked to the bone. Under the trees of Great South Road I would surrender to the forgone conclusion but I didn’t mind it as much. Damp, uncomfortable wool and polyester of my school uniform clinging to my body, hair at maximum frizz and curl or relented to the weight of the water. Drenched in the rain, I’d strip off and take a warm shower.

Why is water so cleansing and good, so welcome when it flows from pipes and faucets but when water falls from the sky, raw and uncontrolled it makes our skin jump, our shoulders hunch and our faces fall inwards with new wrinkles around the nose and eyes? How can I leap into oceans, rivers and lakes and climb to waterfalls gleefully when I choose to do so but when the water chases me, pouring out of the sky, I flinch?

When I began wearing glasses, I started to flinch from the rain in ways I hadn’t before. Rain can be like tears, hard to see through. Exposes the weakness of my sight. Reveals that clothes are just fabric, susceptible to the elements as we are. I am exposed in the rain.

Is it the control I resist relinquishing? The rain falls without invitation. The intimacy of the raindrop that falls, catching on the skin of my neck, coursing a stream into places unseen? Exposing my vulnerability with the abruptness of the touch that comes without invitation? These questions lead me to ask what I must do to recapture the delight of the child that jumps in puddles.

When I was even younger, a large cyclone bore down on my city and we watched from our classrooms as great grey clouds rolled across the sun. We lost the light into greyness for a week, only knowing the dampness of our toes inside our shoes from the moment we left home. Across puddles and in those uncomfortable jackets, drips escaping down sleeves and soaking into socks we never feared the rain. Even the discomfort of the squelch… it was a joyous delight. I watched the floodwaters in the playground and at intersections on the way home like swimming lakes to be conquered. Rain was an adventure, to see what the weather might do.

One summer camp, we were flooded out by a summer storm. Buses evacuating one thousand teenagers into a local high school and I found myself forming a group of volunteers to load and unload trucks in the storm. Hair plastered against cheek, I felt brave and strong to stand in the rain so, doing what I could to help out.

What changed between then and now? Was it when I started to wear expensive shoes and carry an iPhone in my pocket or when I exchanged my polyester and cotton for finer fabrics? When did I learn to love the sound of rain on the roof and against the window pane, feeling secure and under shelter more than the cool splash of the elements and wind against my skin?

I used to be so raw and unashamed to be exposed. At least, I think that’s how it was. Maybe it’s just I’ve become used to being dry. Maybe I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be exposed to the elements. Maybe you have to? We get so used to waking up in the morning, jumping into routine and the clothes we wear, the roles we play that we need a reminder. We need to be pulled back into the elements from which we come.

We are 90 percent water, after all. Shouldn’t the rain feel like coming home? We spend so much time in our lives looking up and out to find meaning and connection that when the universe comes falling on our sacred skin, comes reaching towards us – we flinch. It’s a touch we’ve forgotten but somewhere, it feels familiar. A memory of the kids we used to be – curious, shameless and delighting in the sensation and freedom of being drenched. Fearless in our vulnerability.

This weekend I spent a lot of time in the rain and let myself relax into it. I didn’t rush out of the falling water. I stood above a waterfall in the rain and let my glasses get misty. I didn’t want to get back in the car. Watching the water cascade over the falls and touch me at the same time, I wanted to be raw and vulnerable again. I wanted to be exposed. Inside, I felt the storm was inside me and the best I could do was surrender to the storm that was falling down on me.

It was gentle. It was momentary. It was happening all around me and I simply had the invitation to be in the midst of it or to run back to shelter. I felt the raindrops that landed on my neck and the dampness of my cheek. I resisted the urge to flinch. I welcomed the rain and it felt like a caress I had been waiting for a long time.

Floodwaters will rage from time to time. Storms will come and rain will fall then sometimes not fall. It’s a rhythm and cycle of how the earth works. Despite our best intentions, our storm water systems, drainage and strong buildings – rain still falls. Sometimes it creeps in through the cracks and sometimes it will be torrent. We build and construct our plans to control the impact of the rain but we cannot make the weather. “Rain, after all, is only rain; it is not bad weather.” 

“Rain, after all, is only rain; it is not bad weather. So also, pain is only pain, unless we resist it, when it becomes torment.” – The I Ching

We cry out when dry, thirsty and stricken with drought for the rain to come – when we are ready. We turn and run from floodwaters that expose our weakness and threaten our security. But I would rather be rain-soaked and taken by surprise by the proximity of God, than ever to be dry again. Let it rain.

If theology is a conversation about our ideas of God, then talking about rain is a good place to start. What if we could learn to live in rhythm with the rain? We are meant to live in communion with our environment and each other. To nurture it more than we do and in return, be nurtured by it. The rain is our life-source, after all. We could learn to live around the rain and in the rain, rather than build our palaces to hide us from it.

I have never felt so close to the Universe as under the raw sky in a canvas tent, smelling the rain and dirt as the Earth goes about the business of replenishing and withdrawing from itself. I have had moments of profound aliveness walking through the bush soaked in rain to bathe at the bottom of a waterfall; listening to the birds and forest sing with the life-giving refreshment the rain brings after the heat of a summer day.

If you watch and wait, the clouds will gather and cover the sun. The rain will fall and the earth opens, releasing her fragrance again. Green appears from the dust and the crickets, birds and trees rustle into their songs again as the light emerges from the passing storm. The earth breathes, the water cools and refreshes the land.

That’s the thing about God. Ain’t no bully, despite what some say and demonstrate. God is gracious and gentle. When we flinch, God rarely pushes. I believe it is in the nature of the Universe to be so, allowing us the wilful fortitude of closing the door on unwelcome invasion and waiting for the beauty of invitation. We, yearning for control in a world that seems spinning, so often say no. The universe gently persists and reminds us with a raindrop or two, that our vulnerability is welcome with God.

Nudging, the Art of Small Catalysts.

Nudging, the Art of Small Catalysts.

I’m sweating. My breath is more ragged than normal, blood thumping through my body. Pink and flushed, head back against the wall and eyes closed, counting my breath back under control and realigning the pull of muscles against my spine. This is me, engaged in the deeply spiritual practice of Nudging.

{nudging}
verb
in order to attract attention
touch or push gently or gradually
coax or gently encourage
(in Nordic nugga, nyggja ‘to push, rub’.)

It’s also me, returning to the boxing gym after 6 weeks away, 3 weeks of medication and surgery. My body is usually stronger than this but normal slips away quickly if you don’t keep your rhythms. So I’m nudging because returning to the same place I was isn’t enough. I want to see how much further I can go. A little more sweat, a little more stretch, a few more rounds. Nudging: to see how far you can go. Nudging to see what more you can wring out of your body, your mind. In the gym, it looks messy. At higher reps my form gets untidy as I get tired, my cheeks impossibly pink.

And my trainer says, ‘C’mon Tash, we’re giving it a nudge.’

What exactly is a Nudge?
Picture a pile at the precipice of a cliff and you’re standing behind it. Looks like it might fall but how do you know? You give it a little nudge. A gentle push, a little coax in the right direction. When you give something a nudge, you look to see whether there is an opportunity for movement. In the animal kingdom, this pattern is external – one elephant nudges the smaller elephant in the right direction.

Sailors look for the ripple of the right wind on the surface of the ocean and watch the currents the birds drift on. When you see a glimmer of wind that might take you in the right direction, you nudge the pilot’s wheel in the direction of the wind and see whether you can catch some speed.

Our approach to our own transformation might be better described as ‘discovery’.

nb: nudging is not nudge theory, a human behaviour theory about decision-making that is sometimes used for political and social manipulation, but there is certainly some truth in the observations of how we might cognitively improve the outcomes we seek. 

I have practiced Nudging for a long time now. Expending a small amount of energy to see where there is opportunity for growth and movement.

You will might oscillate a dozen times in your life between striving for change or avoiding it, but transformation is the only way to grow. We don’t change completely overnight but in a series of small, incremental steps. I watch my 7 month old niece and her transformations, each so small and easily overlooked, seem a wonder to me. But in my mirror, I want to see broad, sweeping changes. We’ve embraced the glamour of grand reveals and 180 degree changes as the right kind of story.

But our neural wiring simply can’t keep up with the reprogramming when we try to change too much, too fast. Whether our habits, our thought processes, our rhythms of the day – it’s easy to overwhelm our physical and neural systems. We need to think big but step small so we don’t work against our True Selves in the work of transforming.

“Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.” – Parker J Palmer

Parker Palmer speaks to this disconnect between how we see our autonomy in the process of transformation. Nudging is a beautiful way of giving intent to your transformational desires and goals, but allowing the rhythm of your life to work with you. Nudging gives you a chance to see where the wind and movement of your life is leading you and work with it, not against it.

Our ideas about transformation are often too concrete – we do not enter into the process of transformation without an end goal or expectation of what transformation will look like. But the pumpkin looks nothing like the seed from which it comes. Nor the fruit of the apple tree resemble the seed or the tree.

Our approach to our own transformation might be better described as ‘discovery’. Much like sailing into the wind to see what happens, we listen to our life and begin the process of transformation to see what might happen. What might our tender, wondrous little changes result in? What wonder might our small lives contain if we allow the change to happen?

We need to think big, but step small. 

So how do you Nudge?

First, nudging is about giving attention. Sometimes there are aspects of my physical, intellectual, emotional or spiritual self that need some movement. Attention creates space. Like #100days of simply paying attention to what was in front of me each day, an opportunity for creative intervention.

Sometimes nudging is about pushing gently and gradually. This month, I am pushing a bit harder, giving more than what I usually give in the gym to reach a new pinnacle of strength and flexibility. I’m giving it a nudge literally, to shift the dial on strength, energy and output from my physical self. When I push, I push first in the direction of what I know is already working in my life.

And sometimes a nudge is about wooing, coaxing and encouraging myself and others to new movement. I’m trying to read a philosophy or ideological work each month that is useful for me and others. It’s just a nudge for my spiritual and communal self to embrace new ideas. I engage with my desire for transformation and my frustration through embracing new ideas and ways of thinking about what’s in front of me.

When I am nudging, things get sharper. New ideas nudge old habits and both get clearer. My spiritual practices don’t get overhauled, they become fine-tuned. My horizons and understanding expands, given permission to explore and discover.

Slowly and gently pay attention to your life. There is something to learn in every aspect of it. Don’t be afraid to enter into transformation with just a nudge to see what may become of your willing self. Nudge and discover what might come. 

Want to join me in a Nudging journey? Let me know the space you want to nudge in and we can journey together.

How You Recognise The Life You’re Meant To Live.

How You Recognise The Life You’re Meant To Live.

‘Oh man, you’re brave,’ she said. 

I didn’t feel very brave. I’d just confessed that I hadn’t done the job I was meant to do and more importantly, why I hadn’t done it. I thought it was morally wrong as well as a waste of time. So I hadn’t done what I’d been asked to do and now I was paying the price for pretending. But I have always been brave in the art of honesty and confessing.

‘Brave would have been saying no and what I thought in the beginning, I think,’ I replied ‘instead of pretending like I was sometime going to get around to it.’

‘Maybe. But it doesn’t change how brave you were in the last five minutes. You just faced it head on. I couldn’t do that, whether I was in the right or the wrong.’ 

Maybe it was that I thought I had nothing left to lose but she was right, I was brave. I am brave.

Brave is not all of me, but it is a significant part. And when she said it, I recognised myself in a dozen different instances from age 4 to 19 years old. The brave girl who has learned to say what she thinks. 

If your True Self is a muscle that flexes at a mere trigger, you feel the energy that displaces as soon as that muscle engages. Recognition. You recognise yourself in the moments you think and act out of your Truest nature. Our most True Self is the one who emerges when we are free to form our own shape instead of pushing ourselves into other shaped boxes.

Important side note: there is a difference between what feels familiar and what we recognise. We are drawn to the familiar because it feels known, we see patterns we know and out of habit, we understand how to respond and operate within that system or construct. Often these patterns of familiarity draw us back towards what has been, rather than what might be. 

Recognition is as precise and distinct as a puzzle piece, with only one place that precise shape and colour way can fit. A distinct and necessary part of the puzzle that is you. Your life is the same – the tasks and situations that my hands were made for, where my voice has the most resonance, where my words make sense.

rec·og·ni·tion
ˌrekəɡˈniSH(ə)n/
noun
  • the action or process of recognising or being recognised, in particular.
    synonyms: identification, recollection, remembrance
  • identification of a thing or person from previous encounters or knowledge.
  • acknowledgment of something’s existence, validity, or legality.
    synonyms: acknowledgement, acceptance, admission
Lately, I’ve been recognising myself again. In moments of a little freedom or when back in wide open spaces – the brave, courageous girl comes rushing back out. I have to be brave again, because being my brave self is key to getting back on the path to my life.

The girl who wants to change the world. She is fully connected to her wisdom and knows that her voice resonates and travels on the wind to the far corners of the earth. She feels the permission of the universe to be Other and her otherness is empowering. She feels engaged to her sensual, epicurean self. She has been leaning into her True Self wherever she recognises her and remarkably, it feels like the world is leaning in towards her too. 

I’ve gone on a journey the last few years of trying to follow a script that isn’t my own. Granted, I’ve followed it in my own weird way but here I am, with a list of lessons and skills I’ve learned and an aching heart to get back to being myself.

The Brave within me is relentlessly hammering at the cage of my skeleton, the muscles flexing to make themselves known.. there is more. Not more success or more fame, more fortune (in fact, that is the least likely outcome) but more of ME. There is more of myself waiting to come out and be useful, meaningful and beautiful in the world.

Perhaps it was Mother Superior in The Sound of Music who said it best: ‘You have to live the life you were born to live.’

So I’m listening to myself, recognising the Brave and letting her be, Myself. True Self. Steve Jobs once said ‘Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.’ I think Steve was right. I know who I want to become and I have some ideas about the how and what and the why.

Embracing again, a truth I have always known and recognised a dozen times as it has come to me – I’ll make my own way through this world, not bound to follow a path or a script written by anyone else.

That’s how you know you’re recognising it – because your instinct is to lean into the spaces your True Self fills. And the more of your True Self you lean into, the more of your False Self you fall out of. 

That is the life I recognise. The one my heart and intuition knows. Once you begin to recognise yourself and give voice and space to that person, you begin to recognise your life. It happens all at once; a collusion of what is happening within us and around us and all we have to do is pay attention to what we recognise.

My body knows. There are some people I am naturally drawn towards. It’s easy to share affection or to want to be close. There are others I don’t want to touch me at all. My body knows who belongs and who doesn’t and I let my body tell me, all the time. I follow her instincts and she does not let me down.

My heart knows what matters most and if I’m not paying attention, it will bang away inside my heart cage of rib & lung until I listen and spend some time there.

My spirit and soul know when I am my True Self and when I am not. They war against me when I stay too long inside a box that’s not for me. They stretch out for the open spaces constantly. They have been warriors within me and for me these last few years as I have been learning. Now they are clamouring and dragging my attention back to the path.

The body knows. The heart knows. The spirit and the soul knows. Recognition has us instinctively leaning in. Our self whispers ‘more of that, more of that, more of that’.

You recognise your life sometimes before you know you have it; reaching effortlessly for the pieces that belong. The places and the people who fit just so into your puzzle pieces and before you can blink, you are living and fully alive.

That’s how you know you’re recognising it – because your instinct is to lean into the spaces your True Self fills. And the more of your True Self you lean into, the more of your False Self you fall out of.

I have recognised fragments of my life a dozen times over. Places, moments and people who have fit into the puzzle, tasks that have been my truest self, lessons that have refined me not restrained me. I hold on to them, I’ve let them become anchors because I know they fit. I haven’t always known how and I don’t pretend to now. But I know they belong.. I recognise my life when I see it.

There are times I’ve mistaken familiarity for recognition.. but those things have just been a shadow, a watercolour of my true life. I’ve quickly learned to let them go but not without pain. It’s the dream we chase because we know we need to chase it, even though the first, third and fifth attempts might fail. We persevere and strive towards the life we recognise, the one we are writing for ourselves.

So here is the lesson, here is the big Brave of this next step in the journey. Recognising my true life and when I see it, leaning into it. 

(the opening image credit belongs to David Hayward, whose art has been a constant companion and source of wisdom in my journey)

When You are in the Graft.

When You are in the Graft.

Not done yet: but instead always onwards, upwards and downwards on the journey of life.


This is harder than it sounds. But if there is within you some ache, frustration or desire that will not rest – you are not done yet. Fight for your life, through the pain not against it.

If it hurts, if you cannot numb it with distraction then you are in the graft. The part where your existing roots are weaving with, growing into and assimilating the new, organic life ahead of you.


In a greenhouse, the master gardener painstakingly grafts one plant to another. One stem to a stronger stem, one variety to another. Shaping and bending organic matter to stronger, newer and previously unseen beauty. To do it, there must be wounds, in order to splice new life onto old.

The wounds bring new beauty eventually. Your job is to show up to the bittersweet pain every day for as long as it takes to be made new.

If it’s important, someone – you – will need to bleed for it. Whatever your life looks like. Sometimes your fight to get there will actually look like surrender. Not to futility or hopelessness, but the ache that so often accompanies Hope.

Often, we fight our greatest battles by choosing to relax and embrace the hardest moments until we learn what we need to from them. Nothing is wasted.

Do not fight the pain in your life but don’t magnify it either. Let pain do it’s work in you; a sign of life to come. A message of reminder: you are not done yet.

My dreams, desires and hopes are sometimes so large the corresponding wound feels too deep. But it only lasts a moment, like stepping with bare feet onto a gravel path. I learn to walk, limping, on paths I otherwise would not traverse. I strengthen muscles and stretch new ligaments. Pain accompanies growth.

Do not give up; dear ones. Let your courage rise and fight for your life, found on the gravelly, ascending hill paths. When shaken, find your footing again. Deflated, breathe deep into your lungs and keep walking.

Do not give up, do not fight against the pain; fight with it and through it for your life. Hold onto your graft.

Kia kaha, kia maia, kia manawanui (be strong, courageous, be steadfast and willing).

In times of grafting, I often to return to texts and books that have helped me accept and journey with pain in healthy ways. They may be helpful to you.

Henri Nouwen: the Inner Voice of Love

Richard Rohr: Falling Upward

Hannah Hurnard: Hind’s Feet On High Places