'Let Your Life Speak'

   Happy rainy Saturday evening....from me to you. I know I go on and on about the rain but it is about to do me in. This morning my husband was saying he felt actually incredibly angry to wake up to rain AGAIN!!! We are actually getting angry :)  SOOOOO if you are in  a sunny part of the world take a minute and enjoy the light and warmth for me? I would appreciate that. We are almost starving for it here!

  I am reading a new book by Parker J. Palmer called 'Let Your Life Speak' and it is reminding me about all the things in life that I have learned are important and good. It starts with this poem by William Stafford called 'Ask Me.' I will write it out and then write a bit more from the book.


Ask Me
Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life.
Others have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt:
ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

"Ask me whether what I have done is my life." For some, those words will be nonsense, nothing more than a poet's loose way with language and logic. Of course what I have done is my life! To what am I supposed to compare it?
  But for others, and I am one, the poet's words will be precise, piercing, and disquieting. They remind me of moments when it is clear - If I have eyes to see - that the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me. In those moments I sometimes catch a glimpse of my true life, a life hidden like the river beneath the ice. And in the spirit of the poet I wonder: What am I meant to do? Who am I meant to be?  Parker J. Palmer


~ So you may have a hint of why this book is speaking to me by this small glimpse or you might not. I may choose to go into it more as I read more of it. However if you struggle with self esteem and feel like you are not sure of who you are this might be a really encouraging book for you. Here is some more beauty.

"Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent."

"The soul speaks its truth only under quiet, inviting, and trustworthy conditions."

"The soul is like a wild animal - tough, resilient, savvy, self sufficient, and yet exceedingly shy. If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wildness we seek."

And lastly cause I love you all :)

"She did not show up as raw material to be shaped into whatever image the world might want her to take. She arrived with her own gifted form, with the shape of her own sacred soul. Biblical faith calls it the image of God in which we are all created. Thomas Merton calls it true self. Quakers call it the inner light, or "that of God" in every person. The humanist tradition calls it identity and integrity. No matter what you call it, it is a pearl of great price."

YOU and your sacred precious soul are a pearl of great price ~