You All ROCK!

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!

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Questions (and a little request/challenge)

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 

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10

The Joy of Forced Relaxation

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.

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3

Eat, Pray, Have More Tolerance for Other People’s Good Fortune

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.” 

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0

Concessions

My 12-year old son does sports at school, and that means that his parents “do” sports as well, meaning that we drive places, and then drive back from places, and “volunteer” to help out at sporting events.  Right now, it’s basketball season, and this week I was “volunteered” to work the concession stand at one of the games.  I love to watch my son move; I love to see him run when he’s doing cross-country, sprint when he’s doing track, pass and shoot when he’s playing basketball.  What I do not love is wearing plastic food-service gloves and selling dried out pizza to snotty 13-year old girls, who, with their masses of barrettes and braces, travel in packs and never say “please.”

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1

Keep Calm (or Not) and Carry On

Here is a picture of a print that I have in my office:

You may know it–it became very popular this year, and is supposedly a reproduction of the original “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster produced by the British Ministry of Information in 1939.  There’s even a Keep Calm and Carry On website where you can order lots of cool stuff.

As one might have predicted, however, the popularity of this poster spawned a multitude of spoofs.  Which is why I also have this postcard in my office as well…

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10

Lesson of the Orchid

Happy Monday, everyone!  Today I have sort of a Monday-type question for you (in other words, one that you probably won’t really feel like answering because you suspect you will have to admit something unpalatable about yourself if you did).  But don’t worry, we’re all here together, and I promise not to leave you on an uninspired note.  Anyway, here’s the question: do you have something, or a variety of somethings in your life, something about yourself, something you want to stop doing, or need to start doing, but you don’t, and what’s more, the way you are going along is simply making you more and more miserable (or you have the suspicion that it is, when you spend a moment to look at whatever the situation is out of the corner of your eye), and yet you keep doing it anyway?  Well, I do.  I have one big something and a variety of small somethings, and I can’t seem to get any real traction on dealing with them.  Most of the time I feel like I really don’t have what it takes to do what it takes.  But then yesterday afternoon I fell asleep and had this dream…

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7

The Coming

The title of this post sounds like it could be the name of a horror movie, doesn’t it?!  But hopefully by the end of the post it will make sense why I chose it.  Here’s some of what I’ve learned so far in my research about the meaning of Advent: historically, the primary sanctuary color of this church season is purple.  This is the color of penitence and fasting as well as the color of royalty to welcome “the Advent of the King.”  Purple is still used in some traditions (for example Roman Catholic).  The purple of Advent is also the color of suffering used during Lent and Holy Week.  Some articles I read say that this points to a connection between Jesus’ birth and death. The idea is that the nativity, the incarnation, cannot be separated from the crucifixion. One article said, “The purpose of Jesus’ coming into the world, of the ‘Word made flesh’ and dwelling among us, is to reveal God to the world through Jesus’ life, but also through his suffering, death, and resurrection.”  So even though I feel a little self-conscious about starting off on this slightly-too-churchy for me language, there are two things I love about this information…

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5

The Season of Light: An Invitation to a Poetic Advent

There are some special announcements today at From the Heart, and I’m so excited to share them with you!  The first is that, as some of you may remember, this blog started with a project called Radical Lent: A Poetic Approach to 40 Days in the Wilderness.  I had decided last March that as a Lenten practice, I would read a poem each day and then write about it here.  And I invited some people to read along, and they were gracious enough to say yes, and well, the whole thing sort of took off from there.  So here’s the news I’m excited to share: I’ve decided to do an Advent blog called “The Season of Light: An Invitation to a Poetic Advent.”  This project will follow pretty much the same pattern as the Lenten blog: a poem and a post each day during the Advent Season.  Below are some more details (and a request)! 

 

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