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“Know that we are connected in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.” – Lynn Ungar When someone I know had lost a loved one or a dear pet, I felt uncomfortable and uncertain with what to say. But when my brother died a couple months ago, I found the simple “sorry for your loss,” profoundly comforting. I find this basic truth helpful as we navigate this critical time: Keep it simple. We are connected, and we can help each other in simple but profound ways. PANDEMIC by Lynn Ungar. What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath-- the most sacred of times? Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling. Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world different than it is. Sing. Pray. Touch only those to whom you commit your life. Center down. And when your body has become still, reach out with your heart. Know that we are connected in ways that are terrifying and beautiful. (You could hardly deny it now.) Know that our lives are in one another’s hands. (Surely, that has come clear.) Do not reach out your hands. Reach out your heart. Reach out your words. Reach out all the tendrils of compassion that move, invisibly, where we cannot touch. Promise this world your love-- for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, so long as we all shall live. I hesitated sending out this blog, again confronted with the internal resistance of what to say. Does my share and reach-out really matter? Well, yes. That’s it for each of us really. Even if only one of you receive this message as helpful, you are worth my time. Reaching out, letting others know you are with them in heart, that’s important. It matters. Sorry for your loss. How can I help? I am here. Times such as these can bring forth the best within us: our generosity, our humanity and our knowing that we are in this together. We can choose to learn and evolve from such frightening encounters with crisis, or not. What I understand about this situation is that it’s not whether we get through it but how. And that this health crisis is likely to happen again, in some form or another. There will be losses. But let not the losses be our compassion or connection to one another. I invite you to consider what you can do, to go to that uncomfortable but resilient place of reaching out to neighbors, strangers, and loved ones. I invite you to bring forth the best in yourself and others through simple acts of generosity, connection and service. On my to do list?: Purchase a book from my local bookstore. Write uplifting messages on my sidewalk with chalk. Send out this blog. Share poems. Set up a virtual writing circle. (Email me if you want to be part of it.) Take a virtual yoga class. Write letters to friends and family. Write on my book. Check to see how I may help in my community. Meditate a bit more. Make phone calls. Offer my on-line classes for free to people who can’t afford them. Check up on the elderly in my life who are confined. Deliver a care package from Amazon to a few people. Contemplate how I might be of help to someone today. Walk my dogs. Get caught up on stuff. Smile at everyone, from a distance. Write some more. I am here. How can I help? “Know that our lives are in one another’s hands. (Surely, that has come clear.)”. – Lynn Ungar (Check out and purchase her lovely poetry book!) My on-line classes: Be The Cause of Your Life The Initiated Writer I am available for phone or ZOOM sessions during this time of confinement. Email to schedule. Julie@julietallardjohnson.com Fee is based on your ability to pay. Email me and let me know how you are doing! Julie@julietallardjohnson.com It’s been awhile since I sent out a blog. It’s been awhile for a lot of things, actually—some that matter, some that don’t. Big changes in my life over the past several years along with the tragic narrative of our nation right now made me stop putting myself out there in ways I was accustomed to. But that’s okay. Because here I am—I’m back. I took an accidental sabbatical from this blog, from offering my monthly transformational circles, and from working on my Red Thread book. (I had finished it about three years ago.) Pivotal shifts in our lives are good times to reflect, take a break from our routines, and assess what no longer serves us or fits . . . to explore and try new things. Transformational times can be good for detours and what might feel or appear to others as the wrong way to go. In this interval I wrote less. I walked a lot and found yoga again. I took on a teaching job through the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I became a proud member of Al-Anon. I moved to Mount Horeb from our forty acres outside Spring Green. None of these are better or problematic, right or wrong, just paths taken. Along with our sabbaticals and breaks in routine, I find that we may make choices that look wrong and are certainly a detour from our usual path. For example, I realize that sometimes compassion has a fist. Sometimes we need to risk being in the wrong company so we can sit at their table and remind ourselves that we have nothing to prove but everything to share and learn. We don’t need to be with people (for very long) whom we don’t like. (And it’s okay not to like someone!) Be yourself even when it makes others uncomfortable. We don’t owe anyone anything (and vice-versa). We can allow people to come and go as they choose. It’s also okay to try something out only to reject it; to start something up and decide to not finish it. We can break promises and move on. A few months ago, I decided to reclaim my place in the bigger story. And no matter how discouraged or tired I was, to bring something to the communal table. I also needed to let myself do things the wrong way. (What others might consider the wrong way.) On my walk through Stewart Park the other morning we (my dogs and I) were detoured to a path that had signs that read “WRONG WAY.” We went on this detour because the path through the marsh was being reseeded. So, in order to do the right thing, to protect the regeneration of the marsh, we had to go the wrong way. This got me thinking (and writing this blog once again), on just how important it can be to take a detour from our typical way(s) of doing things. Even if a path has been made for us, we can give it time to reseed before we walk it. I believe it’s important for each of us to stay active in our own personal narrative as well as the national narrative and not to become numbed or silenced because the negative overwhelms or discourages us. Or, we feel that we have to become like the monsters that we fight. And there are monsters. Over the course of my life I’ve learned how to confront and challenge my internal monsters, however, the outer ones at this time appear undeterred and relentless. Our republic and our democracy is at a very real risk of failing. Violence is on the rise and racism and hate have larger platforms than ever before. In the past I’ve found ways to navigate relationships with those who are narcissistic and vengeful. Now we have a sitting president whose ugliness brings out the ugliness in us and around us. He also mirrors our internalized racism, which no one in America has escaped. What do I, what do we, do with that? What can we do? To deal with the bullies in our lives, to let the good get reseeded, and to remain in the conversation we may sometimes have to take a detour and go the wrong way for the right reasons. To get a seat at the table (or to keep one), to be a voice in the room, to make a difference (or at least try)—these are my reasons for writing you, for sending this blog. This is one small way I reach out and make contact. This is part of my process of reseeding my path so that I may walk forward on it. After some time spent in detour mode, I finally did get a publisher for my Red Thread book, which will be released in April of 2020. I am starting up my monthly transformational circle based on that book this September (see below), and I am finding ways to be part of the needed reseeding that our communities and country need. We can't; I can't keep taking the worn path. In all of this, I’m keeping my seat at the table and finding new paths to take, both on my own and together with others. Join me! Monthly Transformative Circle: The Red Thread: Touching Reality (and being Heroic) in our Everyday Lives at Healing Services on the River in Prairie Du Sac. Learn more and sign up. Starts this September 12th. TO BREAK A PROMISE Make a place of prayer, no fuss, just lean into the white brilliance and say what you needed to say all along, nothing too much, words as simple and as yours and as heard as the bird song above your head or the river running gently beside you. Let your words join one to another the way stone nestles on stone, the way water just leaves and goes to the sea, the way your promise breathes and belongs with every other promise the world has ever made. Now, leave them to go on, let your words carry their own life without you, let the promise go with the river. Have faith. Walk away. TO BREAK A PROMISE from THE SEA IN YOU:Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love’ © David Whyte and Many Rivers Press Now Available at davidwhyte.com The Long Night Moon I cast my spell on this eve of the Long Night Moon To be graced with recognition of you of us as we truly are This moon knows me well. How I have prayed to Her decades ago to end my stretch of sorrow. A spell this time to be known And graced My feeder with chickadee And Her song To be graced and lit to be met half-way in darkness and in light with stranger and friend. to know you and be known fully round The spell is cast the door opened I prepare my life for your arrival. A meal for two or more An empty coat hook yours, A pair of house shoes, your size And my heart set next to the built-in writing desk A place for you and you and for The Other too when you arrive. “Long Night Moon Ritual” by Julie Tallard Johnson Buddhist teachings reveal how distraction from the moment, and the reality of the moment, leads to confusion, apathy and misinterpretation of reality. But too many pasttimes are just that – built in to distract us. One of the great distractions is television, now extended to the screens of our computers and phones. Advertisements brag how we can watch our favorite shows any where, any time. Why wait in line in silence, or in conversation with those around you, when you can watch the little screen on your phone? I remember when going on a road trip meant we shared in conversation and games as the scenes and landscape changed. And our landscape is changing, right now.
We writers and spiritual pilgrims are world builders, shape shifters; we make heroes, and, we identify and fight villains. We can be the hero in our own lives and stories. We discover personal truth where ever we are courageous enough to explore; we can consider any possibility. We can risk everything or risk nothing. Over the past few weeks I have heard a certain reference multiple times: We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
In my writing, teaching and counseling, as well as in my own spiritual and relational life, the shaping of my experiences gets down to a willingness to keep an explorer’s mind. Instead of going into something all sure of what it is about, we open our heart and mind to the experience. I do the same as I write. Even as I write this blog for you I maintain a curiosity about my subject. I explore. I hold a conversation with my ideas. This way I discover a lot more than if I came in with a set idea of what is suppose to happen, or what I “should” write about. Life at its essence is conversational. Most important is to have your own thoughts, build your worlds and views. Establish a foundation and communication with your true self, your heart and soul. For this, John O’donahue recommends that we develop a language of, and with, our own soul. My book, Wheel of Initiation helps each of us create our own soul language. “We must find ourselves in ourselves,” as Dostoevsky said. Too many people do not know the sacred language of their own souls. They don’t know what they are truly saying to themselves. Because we are an “eternal essence,” (John O’donahue, Anam Cara), a spiritual being having a human experience, the Mystery of who we are cannot be limited to our work, roles or whatever scam our ego may be selling us. And, it can never be who others say, or insist, we are.
“Some nights stay up till dawn as the moon sometimes does for the sun. Be a full bucket, pulled up the dark way of well then lifted out into the light. Something opens our wings, something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us, we taste only sacredness.” ( -Thirteenth-century Persian prayer, translated by Robert Bly) Want help with your exploring? Contact me for a session. For the month of May and June I am offering discounted consultations for my blog readers.
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©2024 Julie Tallard Johnson, MSW, LCSW
The Writer's Sherpa
Transformational & Embodied Counselor & Mentor
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The Writer's Sherpa
Transformational & Embodied Counselor & Mentor
Most rights reserved. Admin