Buttering the Sky

Slipping
On my shoes,
Boiling water,

Toasting bread,

Buttering the sky:
That should be enough contact
With God in one day
To make anyone
Crazy.

~Hafiz

::

This morning, a foggy easy Sunday morning here in the city, Rachelle Mee-Chapman asked this question of her friends:

What feels like prayer to you today?

Such a rich and provocative question…

On Sundays…

While prayer is for each day and every day, today is Sunday.

On Sundays, dance is my usual form of prayer, the dance floor my church. There is no dance on Labor Day Sunday, though, as the big Sausalito art fair takes over the town.

So, today I write. The empty page is also my church, and writing another form of prayer.

Today, I sit in this warm and inviting cafe writing, and I consider her question.

Voices

I listen to voices sprinkling words through the air, trying to communicate as best they can what wants to be said.

I hear laughter.

I hear English and French.

I hear people who are hungry and thirsty, ordering nourishment for their bodies.

I hear people hungry and thirsty for more than food, perhaps communicating with each other to feed more than their bodies…to feed their souls.

Noticing

I’ve been noticing, just this week, how much I ‘think’ my life.

When I think my life, my body feels tight, constricted and stressed.

When I ‘think’ my life, I push and strive.

When I ‘think’ my life, it is just me by myself trying to carry the heavy load that I learned to carry. The load is indicative of something I have to do, somewhere I have to get, someone I have to be. It’s all some kind of illusion my mind keeps creating.

Life as Prayer

Rachelle’s question and Hafiz’s words bring me back to reality, the reality of Life simply unfolding…Life as Prayer.

I posted Rachelle’s question on my Facebook page, and Emily Silbert answered with this:

Today it was the mundane act of grocery shopping and stopping the automatic list-driven purchasing to get myself an orchid. i stopped and looked into it and it was holy, i was holy, the whole grocery store was holy.

Holy is right here, right now.

What if holy is all there is?

There is something amazing in women: beautiful, soft, gentle, strong, vibrant and powerful, the fullness of which is being kept hidden from the world. The world needs this beauty to be brought forward, to shine, to share and to engage with all of life.

Sometimes we catch glimpses of this amazingness of women: a look here, a touch there, words of wisdom spoken with eloquence, strength and grace.

I see this femaleness in my friends, my sisters, my daughters. I see it in strangers as they are with their children, or interact in business, or even simply walking down the street.

I feel this femaleness within my own self, deep within my body. It is my life force and the source of my creativity. When I don’t allow this truth of who I am to be seen, I can feel resentful, but it is only me that can allow it out.

When I coach my female clients to reclaim this femaleness, this vibrancy that is the source of the juice of life, I get to feel the exquisite expression of life dancing as woman. On some level, we are all, men and women, looking to reclaim this vibrancy, this life force that is ever present within. Perhaps we simply need to be the encourager to each other, to radiate another’s beauty so that they may see it themselves. The wonderful part of this assignment is that this is how we will truly come to know our own radiance.

Can you be the encouragement of Light that Hafiz speaks of for another woman? Find one very special woman and be the encouragement of light against her being. See what you find in doing so.

It Felt Love

How

Did the rose

Ever open its heart

And give to this world

All its

Beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light

Against its

Being,

Otherwise,

We all remain

Too

Frightened.

~Hafiz

photo by dragonflysky on flickr