Returning Home to Your Spiritual and Creative Practices

Door in the wood, 2015

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We want to explore the Unknown with a map--
We want to know what to expect,
or who we will meet up with.
But how our mistakes will leave a trail
that gives way to something new,
or the greening along the path reminds us of something
we might return to
 
Someday.
 
Maybe there’s a place that asks you to share a poem or song
in order to receive a meal,
or a good story might do;
you start in the middle and go from there. 
Everything else will follow, the same way life
follows light. 
 
As you walk on 
everything comes towards you. 
You must offer up your poem, your song, or your story 
to be known. 
Forget your name.
Some will glance up from their lunch, most won’t.
 
But you repeat your favorite phrase, over and over to the stranger,
like the chickadee or wren at dawn and something beyond your glance 
responds.    
 
–Taken from The Zero Point Agreement: How to Be Who You Already Are, poem titled “Ahead,” by Julie Tallard Johnson 

When we are lost and involved in something that doesn't feed the soul or lift our hearts and minds, we may want to remember what does lift our hearts and minds.  Once we remember what lifts us, we know what to return to.  This returning to is a necessary part of the creative and spiritual life. Like in meditation, when our mind wanders, we gently return to the breath, the present moment. Returning to that which nourishes us and feeds the creative inner flame is an essential part of the truly lived life.  A life that moves forward, paradoxically, by returning to.  This invitation to return to and engage in what brings joy, connection, and purpose will empower joy, connection, and purpose.   What matters is that we give ourselves something to return to--and that we do so when we find ourselves wandering too far beyond the boundaries of our creative and spiritual life.  
  
What is “something you might return to?” Does this bring you back home to yourself and the inner creative fire?   Write about that.


What we engage in is empowered.   Contemplate that.