One Heart at a Time

I am afraid.

It was one line from a song I heard a few days ago. It caught my attention. We all feel afraid in some aspect of our lives. We are afraid to fail, we are afraid to succeed, we are afraid to love and even to be loved, we are afraid to take a risk, we are afraid to be alone, we are afraid we will be bad parents, we are afraid to let our loved ones down, we are afraid we will get sick, we are afraid of the unknown, we are afraid of each other. There is so much we fear at one point or another and yet we rarely talk about our fears, some don’t talk about them at all. Without looking at them or facing them, they just continue to live within us.

One of my greatest fears is that I won’t live my purpose, my purpose to listen the way I know how to listen, and share what I hear. There, I said it, and the world didn’t come to an end because I was afraid, but my dream could end if I don’t move past the fear. The sad truth is that often we let the fear we feel, create the very thing we fear. I will choose to feel the fear and continue to move forward anyway. A great lesson I learned from a great man, civil rights leader James Farmer. Courage, he told me, is not the absence of fear, but the choice to move forward despite the fear. Courageous people are not fearless, but they won’t let their fear make them less.

Looking upon my fear with as much grace and courage as I can muster, I set it aside.

For years I have struggled with how I can best live my purpose in this life. It’s clear to me that one thing I’ve come here to do is to listen, to listen to individuals, and to listen to the words that move through my heart. The words sometimes come from a bird, a tree, or a flower. Sometimes they come from the inspiration and insights of a great teacher. Sometimes they come from a photograph or a song, or people I know, or even people I haven’t met. There are stories and poetry all around in this beautiful, grace filled life. Always, always the true origin of the words is Spirit.

The struggle is always what to do with those words. So far, I have shared them as best I can. The constant I have always known about them is that they were always meant to speak from the heart of Spirit, to my heart, to the hearts of others. They are meant to create transformation; a kind of alchemy between the spirit and the human. I know this because I have witnessed it within my own heart. I have witnessed it in the process of writing; watching the pain flow freely and by the end of the flow of the words, discovering that healing was woven within them. My heart’s desire is no more than to offer that same alchemy, that same opportunity for healing to others.

I am afraid though. I’m afraid because I don’t know what that looks like; I don’t know the plan for that sharing. That fear often distracts me and keeps me from doing anything at all. Even when I know part of the plan, I can still let that fear of the unknown stop me. Not this time.

At the beginning of the year I felt a calling, a nudge, an inspiration. I don’t have to know more than this one thing: the words are meant to reach out one heart at a time. For now that is all I need to know, and I do know it, deep within me. So I am consciously, mostly joyfully, birthing what came to me as One Heart at a Time.

To begin with I will be sharing poetry on my blog and on Facebook and potentially other social media platforms. Perhaps it will be just one poem a month, but with intention. The intention is that the poem be shared, one heart at a time. I invite you, if the poem speaks to you, to share it with other hearts, and to encourage them if they feel called to, to share it with other hearts. Share it in any way you like, in person with a loved one, online, in school, at church, at a poetry reading, however you feel called to. All I ask is that you note where it came from – with Peace, Gratitude, and Love from my heart to yours.

A Lesson on Fear

The other day we were at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in DC. Unexpectedly, I received a very interesting lesson about fear while I was there.

There were exhibits about a huge variety of things, robots, building blocks, skulls, tornadoes and hurricanes, robotic fish, anatomy, and even the Magic School Bus. It was lots of fun and a bit overwhelming in the amount of information, but well worth the trip.

Almost everything was interactive including the part about bugs. I don’t normally have a problem with insects and sharing space with them. I do have an issue with eating them as they were offering the opportunity to do and which one of us who shall be nameless, Bill, did partake of!

The lesson came in relation to a tarantula. Spiders are wonderful creatures that can teach us a great deal if we care to observe and listen, but they are also not my favorite creature to be in close proximity to. Most insects I will gently invite to go outside if I would rather not have them in my house. I can do this with spiders also, but for them I generally use the cup and piece of paper method of removal. It may all go back to my youth when my older sister captured a spider for me once and I asked her if she was sure she got it? She of course said, yes and proceeded to open the tissue she had squished it with to prove it to me. Well of course the spider was not dead and the minute she opened the tissue the spider leaped out, right towards my unsuspecting self creating much screaming and running!

So as we proceeded down the aisle of insect related booths and I saw the man standing in the middle of a crowd of squealing children with a tarantula on his hand I had a moment of hesitation. We quickly joined the circle around him though and truthfully I was not really afraid of holding the tarantula under those circumstances. I knew it wouldn’t hurt me and for some reason it was not as scary as a tiny leaping spider. However, I found there was an old pattern there nonetheless.

This man was a great proponent of spiders. As I waited in the circle for my turn to hold it he handed it to a little girl standing in front of me. She was a tiny thing of maybe five years old. She flinched a little but basically had no problem with this tarantula. I stood above her and told her how brave she was. That was the wrong thing to say before a tarantula loving man. He looked at me in all seriousness and said, “Actually, it’s not brave at all because there is nothing for her to be afraid of.”

I knew instantly that he was right and instantly felt that maybe she was actually taller than me after all. I was trying to be supportive of her but instead was only contributing to creating a fear in her that was unfounded. Can tarantulas bite people? Sure, but it’s rare. As he was quick to point out, they may take an aggressive stance to ward off potential predators (like humans) but they rarely bite them. They much prefer to scare their predators away.

It was a reminder in an unexpected way of the power of fear and the need to not perpetuate it. Clearly our minds can create ways of supporting those fears without us even noticing. Or perhaps with us even believing we are being supportive like I thought I was.

Is it brave to face your fears? Sure. I held that tarantula and enjoyed the experience without fear. But I think it also took bravery for him to point out my prejudice and perpetuation of fear and for me to look that in the eye in addition to the tarantula. Thank you to my friends in learning, large and small, who may never know they taught me such a valuable lesson. 

Pledge of Peace and Love ~ Day 3

My practice today centered mostly on peace. The practice of peace actually began last night when my daughters and I went to Kings Dominion to their annual Halloween Haunt and continued into today as I sat with it and as we talked about it. Halloween Haunt is basically a variety of themed haunted houses, as well as fog filled areas of the park called scare zones where people jump out at you. Horror is not my thing, never has been, and I didn’t think it would be something my daughters would particularly enjoy because it’s not really their thing either. However, my younger daughter really wanted to go and find out for herself. I thought she was old enough to have that opportunity, so we went.

It didn’t go well. We waited on line for at least an hour and a half for the first ride (though it was lots of fun!). Then we walked through the scare zone called Feary Tales. The park was darker than it usually is at night and the “fog” so dense in the scary areas that you really couldn’t see much at all sometimes. And yes there were people in frightening costumes with very gory makeup or masks that would follow you or jump out at you. My youngest quickly discovered that she didn’t like it one bit. It made her extremely uncomfortable and unhappy. I was good with leaving right then if she wanted to, but she didn’t want to feel like we had wasted our time. So we went on one more ride and called it quits after that. Even having to walk out to the exit through the scare zones one more time was difficult for her.

Looking back on it I think part of her discomfort was the general atmosphere of not just the park, but also the people attending. The intention of the whole evening was fear created from violence, and that feeling was pervasive. I know it was supposed to be “all in good fun” but from the perspective of peace, it made me wonder why we would think that violence and fear are good fun. Where is the peace in that?

The only peace I found that night was within myself, and I was quite glad that I was able to find it there so that I could share it with my daughters. The crowd was not peaceful; there was a lot of swearing and yelling and one person being led away in handcuffs. The intention of fear and violence had an impact on all there. We have been to the park at night before and it was nothing like what we experienced last night. I don’t exactly regret going because I think it was a good learning for them both; to honor the kind of people they are in the activities in which they choose to participate. I just wish my youngest could have learned that more gently than what she was feeling last night, but I think she learned it quite clearly through the experience. I don’t think it was fear she was feeling as much as discomfort. I felt it too. What an interesting contrast it was for me when I’m consciously trying to live a life of peace to be in the midst of a creation from such a different place. A good learning for all three of us.

We at least could choose to leave as opposed to people who live surrounded by fear and violence that they can’t so easily escape. Along with my daughters, they are part of the reason for this pledge, so that one day none of us will have to leave anywhere to find peace; it will be within and all around us. I believe each choice we each make for peace and love brings us all closer to that world.

The Edge of the World

I told a friend yesterday that I enjoy going to the edge of the abyss and looking out, not knowing what’s next. I said that’s how I learned to fly. It’s true. Leaping from that abyss is the way I learned that I could fly. It’s not that there isn’t fear in standing and leaning over the edge, there’s fear enough to go around, but the beauty of what I’ve learned in leaping outweighs the fear. The joy of learning to fly surpasses the terror of falling. The knowing now that I can indeed soar rather than plummet guides me back to that edge over and over.

That is the place of learning, of expression, of living, of being, the edge of what I know and what remains to be seen. When I do leap and see from that new height the picture changes drastically. Sometimes the view from the edge is distorted by the limits of my earth bound vision. What looked like one thing quickly becomes another from the bird’s eye view, seen clearly with eagle eyes. I wouldn’t have known that, had I never leapt.

Fear may still delay my take off from time to time, but I won’t use fear to rob myself of the freedom of flight again.



There’s a song that reminds me of the thrill of that leap. It’s called Mr. Columbus by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Check it out sometime and have fun flying!