advent – Page 3 – from the heart

I’m blown away by the questions that you emailed me in response to my last post, and to be perfectly honest, they confirmed a secret suspicion I’ve had, one often confirmed by all the writing groups and workshops that I do: one person’s questions are everyone’s questions. We are so much more alike than we are different.

So today, please take a few minutes to read through the questions that you were all brave enough to share (in the comments section of the last post). And, if you so inclined, maybe you’ll even respond to some of them. They are beautiful, heartbreaking, human, real. And we ALL have wisdom to share–this is something I’m 100% sure of.

As promised, I will choose one (but it’s definitely NOT going to be just one, because you’ve given me WAY more material here–yay!) to write about for next few posts. I love you all for your courage, your wondering, and your willingness to stay on the quest.

Anyone who hasn’t sent a question in, you still have the chance! Email me at lesliesrajek@gmail.com and I will post your question anonymously…go ahead, you know you want to!

Love, love and love! You’re the best readers EVER and no one is as lucky as me to be someone that you take the time to read!

Okay, so I have something a little different to share with you today. It seems like it’s two poems, but really it’s two poems that lead to a little challenge that I hope you’ll help me out with. The poems are very different from each other, but are both about questions. For this poem, please note especially verse #7 and onward.

Sometimes

Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest

breathing
like the ones
in the old stories

who could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,

you come
to a place
whose only task

is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests

conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and

to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,

questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,

questions
that have patiently
waited for you,

questions
that have no right
to go away.

David Whyte, Everything is Waiting for You

Continue reading “Questions (and a little request/challenge)” →

My mother used to tell me that, for several years, when I got home from school, I headed straight for the couch and took a nap. And recently, one of my relatives who is retired told me that he had the perfect daily routine: he woke up, had breakfast, read, listened to the radio or podcasts on his computer, then took his bike out for a 20 mile ride, came home, drank two glasses of wine and took a nap. Then he ate a meal, wrote in his journal, maybe worked in the yard. I cannot tell you what I would give for this life. So I’ve been sick for about a week now and aside from the sick part, (and believe me, if I were sick from something really bad, this would be a radically different post) it’s actually quite lovely, because you see many things that you don’t get to see when you’re out in the world.

Continue reading “The Joy of Forced Relaxation” →

Happy second Sunday of Advent, my friends! While I am quite certain that you are not sitting at your computers every morning awaiting the appearance of a post from me, I want to apologize for the missed ones this week. Again, stomach bugs and sitting for long periods of time don’t seem to go well together. I definitely miss you! And I wanted to tell you about something I did this week that I absolutely swore I would not do. In fact, I didn’t even really swear, I just knew that I did not have the slightest interest in doing this thing, so I barely thought about. I watched “Eat, Pray, Love.”