CURIOSITY - THE WAY OF THE WISE

October 1, 2017

| Anne Williamson |

Have you heard of Jimmy Fallon's "Do Not Read" list? In this "bit," he humorously draws our attention to books we seemingly would not want to read because they're obviously too boring or off-putting. The problem is I've wanted to read a few - not "The Complete Book of Exercise Walking" or "The Joy of Uncircumcising," but admittedly, I was somewhat curious about "The Natural History of Vacant Lots." I don't know, maybe it's the dormant urban planner in me or environmentalist. It doesn't really matter; the point is, it's a problem. It's why I have 6 partially read books and another handful of magazines on my nightstand at all times. My curiosity runneth over!

Curiosity may not lead to magazine-ready bedsides, but in my opinion, it does lead to the best kind of life....

BREAKING FREE FROM OLD STORIES

September 24, 2017

| Anne Williamson |

Sometimes it seems like all I did as a kid was imagine. With creative neighbors at my side, my mom’s minivan became a rocket ship. We’d float around it pretending we were in zero gravity, and the horn an alarm for some terrible electrical malfunction. Later, the floors inside the house became dangerous alligator swamps. We’d toss out pillows, jumping from one to the next until safely on land again. I’d imagine things about my future too. I actually had a “make believe” son named Todd before I met and married my husband, Todd. And, I imagined where I would travel, who I would meet, what I would be doing with my life. That unlike how I felt at the time, I imagined someday I’d be comfortable in my own skin.

There is a large part of me that believes my whole life is the result of this imagination, and really continues to be....

THE CIRCLE GAME (for my friend, Rachel Jade)

August 27, 2017

| Monique Rust |

"We’re captive on a carousel of time.”
Man...
Does that have an impact.
And the imagery...it’s spot on. Sometimes we get to ride lightly in the saddles with the intoxicating and beautiful wave of the up-and-down ponies, to feel the wind on our faces and note the admiring glances of the passers-by. Other times we are observers, sitting at the back on the caboose. Sometimes we can’t wait for it to stop. Sometimes we could ride all day. And sometimes the whole thing just makes us sick to our stomachs...

And, “CAPTIVE”?!? What does that mean? Am I being held imprisoned, captive by something I can never fully escape? Am I captivating a crowd, as I writhe and struggle and gasp and grasp and wake and sleep, hide and, once again, seek? Or, am I captivated by the whirling and whirring of the whole darn thing?

Yes! I think the answer is yes.

The source energy was really flowing out of Miss Joni Mitchell when that song came to her, “The Circle Game”...

RESILIENCY TOOL BOX

August 20, 2017

| Lesli Butler |

Our brains are neuroplastic, which means through awareness of thought, we can change the way we view ourselves and view the world. Not just now, but over the course of a lifetime, our brains are able to change and evolve. By evolution, our brains are neuroplastic so we can bounce back from traumatic experiences. So, by nature, we are resilient beings.

Dr. Darlene Mininni PhD, health psychologist and author of The Emotional Toolkit, teaches 5 resilience strategies that are preventative and prescriptive. After becoming familiar with her strategies, I realized I had learned and used most of them in one of my most challenging, yet transformative chapters of life....

DANCING WITH GANESHA

August 13, 2017

| Laura Spriggs Thompson |

In February, I received a postcard marked “Summons for Jury Service” for the first week of May. “Oh great,” I thought. I mean, I know it’s our civic duty and all, but who wants to actually do jury service? I called each night hoping I would not have to go in. But my Wednesday evening call indicated I was to report to the City-County Building the next day. There were 36 of us and they were looking for a jury for a 2-day criminal trial. I kept hoping I would get dismissed. We went to the court room and were told that it was a child molestation case. You could feel the hearts of everyone in the room sink. I prayed – please, please do not pick me. I do not want to think about this ever happening to my girls. But in the end, I am on the jury.

After they selected the jury, we had a break for lunch. I was feeling overwhelmed with emotion. It was an imposition on my time, a stressor for getting childcare and my yoga class covered and for planning a dinner for guests coming Friday. And I did not want to be a part of this case – I did not want to hear the details. I was mad and emotionally distraught.

I was also just starting an online yoga studies program with my long-time favorite yoga teacher. Each module of the training is anchored by a different deity. Over my years of practice and study of yoga, I have been drawn to the deities and their rich symbolism and mythology, which hold much of the philosophy of yoga. I like to think of the multitude of gods and goddesses as different faces of the one great Energy/God/Spirit/Universe/Divine/Consciousness – however you relate to the concept. Sometimes the idea of that One Energy is hard to grasp in totality, we might not relate to it, we might feel separate from it, or we just don’t know where to begin.

The stories, symbolism, and characteristics of the deities help to make them more relatable to our lives....

FINDING ACCEPTANCE FROM WITHIN

July 23, 2017

| Sabrena Suggs |

I once would have loved to convince you through this article that I am a phenomenal writer. I honestly would have hoped to write such an intriguing and thought-provoking article that you would share it on your social media or bring it up at dinner with family or friends. It sounds vain, but it’s the truth. I have often hoped that my words or actions would be seen as impressive by people in order to secure my esteem with their admiration, acceptance, or approval. Although many are likely to identify with these same desires at times, my journey has shown me first hand how this growing obsession of our culture has made us unhealthy. My obsession at times caused me quite a bit of mental and emotional instability – so much so that my instability began to take on the form of anxiety and depression.

Acknowledging this fact was quite a challenge....

THE HEROINE'S JOURNEY (ON SLAYING ONE'S OWN DRAGONS)

July 9, 2017

| Ageeth Sluis |

I remember that it was shortly after I had moved to the US in 1989 that I saw the now iconic Bill Moyer interview series with Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, which showed an aged but nonetheless beaming and brimming Campbell as he took viewers, and most certainly me, into the fascinating and mysterious world of ancient myths, connecting symbols and archetypes to everyday lives and the world of now, my world of now.

Campbell was inspiring, especially to someone having come to the US to study. His way of being an academic was refreshing. A renowned expert on Comparative Religion, Campbell nonetheless took an “iconoclastic road” as a scholar, teacher and writer. He was, in the words of one biographer “an ecstatic scholar,” who, rather than adhering to the scientific rationalism that characterized the academy during the post-World War II era in which he found himself, recognized that “Life was not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.” His “Tao of Scholarship” took him “beyond the hallowed halls of traditional academia and into a spiritual and psychological view of mythology, which embraces the transcendent Reality referred to by the saints and shamans that can be directly experienced.” [1]

It was this enthusiasm, irreverence and lived knowledge (as well as the fact that Campbell seemingly could care less about religious dogma and doctrine and that for him all religions and spiritualities were equal, similar in their messages and mythical archetypes) that grabbed me....

EXPLORING YOUR NARCISSISM AS A TOOL FOR HEALING

June 25, 2017

| Chad Brown |

Now I know what you might be thinking, “Did he just call me a narcissist?” The answer is no… and maybe. I want to state from the beginning that this post is in no way making light of someone’s otherwise serious condition or diagnosis. The purpose of this post is to review some interesting points about this subject in the interest of becoming more aware of our internal and external experience, and looking more deeply at a subject that we seem to recognize more in others than ourselves.

I have been on a general spiritual journey for about 23 years; however, for the last four years, I have been on a more specific journey focused on what many of us refer to as “healing,” and what I have more recently come to call “integrating.” (More on that integration part later.) I have explored, studied and participated in a multitude of healing modalities and stress relieving techniques, all of which have taught me more about myself and helped me understand why I have been in such confusing pain and, sometimes, so painfully confused.

Recently, I came across an article on the many different types of narcissism. I was intrigued by this; I didn’t know there were several kinds. As I read more articles, educating myself on the potential signs of this condition, a question crept up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder, “Are you a narcissist?”...

SPIRITUALITY & THE TWELVE STEPS

March 19, 2017

An atheist Twelve Steps participant recently wrote that the Twelve Steps do not require him to believe in God, but rather, to stop playing God. This statement expresses beautifully what sits at the foundation of any true spiritual journey: humility. The Twelve Steps offers this truth – which is a process – perhaps better than any other tradition.

In America we love to play Master, riding the two delusions of our own absolute rightness and own absolute control. Deep down we know the truth – we ache inside its walls – but our ego, oh our ego – as poet W.H. Auden put it, our ego would rather us “be ruined than changed.”

The spiritual journey begins and continues with humbly facing the truth of your own life. It is being honest about what is, accepting it as part of your story and then including it as you transcend it. This is the process – not the destination – of enlightenment, salvation, recovery, liberation, whatever-you-want-to-call-it. True freedom is knowing “all is well” not because God is in control but because we have access to a Consciousness – some call it God – that allows us to be strangely at peace with not being in control.

And then, despite this knowing, to get to work anyway. Because, it is not just our own journey that will continue (or not) with whether we humbly face the truth, but our American journey as well. The Twelve Steps knows this; the whole process is done in community, and eventually, for community.

This is the spiritual path of the twelve steps. Join us over the next eight weeks as we raise our consciousness. To do so is for our own wholeness and peace as well as the communities in which we live.

Week of...
April 3 - The Four Assumptions
April 10 - Power(lessness) (Steps 1 & 2)
April 17 - What Does "Surrender" Mean? (Step 3)
April 24 - 360 Degrees of Honesty (Steps 4 & 5)
May 1 - Letting Go & Opening Up (Steps 6 & 7)
May 8 - Transcend & Include (Steps 8 & 9)
May 15 - Consciousness (Steps 10 & 11)
May 22 - A Love That Is Greater Than I (Step 12)

Click for group meeting times and locations, cost, and to sign up.

WHY I'M EXCITED ABOUT THE TWELVE STEPS

March 2, 2017

| Anne Williamson |

Though I've yet to write the official description for the coming spring round, I want to share with you why I'm excited about our topic of Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, and why I think it is the right topic now….

WHAT CAN YOU GIVE?

December 1, 2016

WAYfinders & Friends,

It’s hard to believe WAYfinding was four years old this past October. It’s been quite a journey.

From the very beginning, WAYfinding has been both scrappy experiment and grand vision. It’s been four years of giving ideas a shot, watching some work and others sputter, and ultimately, always trying again. Four years of being and growing, and yet always also imagining and discerning what comes next. Four years of creating a beautiful community movement where folks from diverse theological and ideological perspectives can come together to explore the big questions and practice what it means to be compassionate and loving. And, four years of growing from 8 people in one group to, this fall, 60 people in seven groups and 20 WAYkids.

I am proud of what we’ve created. I hope you are too.

It has also been four years of piecing together a scrappy budget. This is okay. Sweat equity and “making it work” is all part of building something new. But, it’s important we begin making big leaps toward becoming a financially sustainable organization. We need to support the work we’re doing, if we want to continue it and innovate.

To this end, as we head into 2017, I am writing you with a financial update and ask....

THIS IS WHAT THIS ELECTION WAS ABOUT

November 27, 2016

| Anne Williamson |

This has been a tough year. And, the past two and a half weeks have ached in a way I perhaps haven’t yet experienced. It’s not just that as a woman I feel rejected and widely unseen. Or, that as a sister, friend and ally, I cry for the pain and fear my Muslim, immigrant, people of color, and LGBTQ human family is experiencing. Or, the worry I feel for Mother Earth. And, it’s not even just that I am afraid. I was afraid after 09.11. It’s that I’m starting to doubt whether this grand melting pot experiment called America is going to work. Our nation feels divided and to quote Lincoln, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

So, I’ve been asking, “What do I do now? What do we do now?” And, honestly, I’m still sorting this out. I’m not entirely sure. But, two things are bubbling to the surface....

FACING THE SHADOW SIDE

September 11, 2016

| Kim Parker |

When I first began learning about the Enneagram and its nine personality types, I hadn’t yet taken any sort of test or assessment. I learned about all nine types within a two-day workshop. So, on my own, with all the new knowledge I had gathered, I identified my type – or so I thought.

I was fairly confident I was a type 3; but, when I took the test, the results indicated I was a type 9. My immediate thought was, “What?! I am not a sloth!”...

THE ENNEAGRAM: THE WAYFINDING WAY

September 4, 2016

| Anne Williamson |

Questions are central to the WAYfinding experience. Through the use of diverse resources, we release ideas and curiosities into the community so each of us can strengthen our i/Intuition or w/Wisdom or whatever-w/Word-works-for-you muscles. Then, we encourage each other to live out what we h/Hear. This is our way of being.

So, it's a little odd to be embarking on a topic for an entire round that requires so much instruction. The Enneagram to a certain extent must be taught. We're discovering, though, we can still inject the WAYfinding way. Here are two examples as to how....

CROSSING THE ABYSS

August 28, 2016

| Kim Parker |

I had taken nearly every personality test that existed throughout my eleven year career in higher education: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Strengths Finder, DiSC Profile, Multiple Intelligences Inventory, Intrinsic Motivation Assessment Guide, and the list goes on. It was part of my full-time job to teach college students how to grow in self-knowledge and find a career path through these assessments. So, it comes as no surprise my confidence level regarding my own self-knowledge was fairly high.

Then…life took an unexpected turn....

GETTING UNSTUCK

August 14, 2016

| Anne Williamson |

I find it difficult to share a definitive opinion on controversial subjects. One reason I see as positive: I am at ease in the gray, generally believing I am one conversation away from understanding someone else’s perspective. The other reason is often problematic: I like to be liked, for others to think well of me.

Take last week; for example. I come out as a person who doesn’t like the word “blessed” or the phrase “everything happens for a reason.” That should be easy enough for me to share, but it wasn’t. Soon after the newsletter sent, I read a friend’s Facebook story about a little girl battling cancer who finds solace in a song titled, “You [meaning, God] know better than I.” And, immediately, I felt like an asshole. Then, two people unsubscribed from the newsletter, and I couldn’t help but feel a little rejected.

The good news is I now recognize this self-talk for what it is: the ego, fear. And, perhaps not coincidentally, through my own current exploration of the Enneagram, our topic this fall, I’m coming to understand this personal dynamic even better. ...

ARE YOU BLESSED?

August 7, 2016

| Anne Williamson |

There are a number of “churchy” words people don’t like. I took an informal survey and heard: devil, saved, psalm, believer, hell, sin, lost, and my favorite response, “I’ll email you my [presumably long] list. [wink, wink].” Sometimes we simply don’t like how a word sounds. (I’m assuming this is the case with “psalm”; “pew” would be my vote.) More often, we dislike what a word means, how it has been used. This is certainly the case with my least favorite “churchy” word: blessed. Despite often spoken with good intention, it always evokes in me a thoroughly “icky” feeling.

For me, “blessed” is the theological coin flip to “everything happens for a reason.” Life going well: “I am blessed.” Life going not so well: “I am… not… blessed?” “No no, God has a plan; we just don’t always ‘get it.’” All phrases that, somehow, claim too much control over one’s life and not enough at the same time.

Lately, though, as I flounder through the unpredictability (translate “infant”) and volume (translate “toddler”) of my life, I’ve been thinking about the word “blessed” differently. ...

CENTER

May 22, 2016

| Anne Williamson |

By the time anyone reads this blog post, I’ll have a new baby at home. She’ll only be a few weeks old. How will I feel? Perhaps lovely… baby is relatively easy, toddler is adjusting well, the “feel good” hormones are rolling, friends and family are near and welcome. Life is good. Or, maybe, I’ll feel awful… utterly exhausted by a colicky baby and distraught toddler, isolated and intentionally isolating myself in the throws of post-partum. Life will not feel so good.

Most likely, reality will fall somewhere in-between. My life will be both sweet and trying. This seems to be the way of things most of the time – especially in seasons of transition…and limited sleep.

What I believe, what I trust, is it will be how I react in the midst of the trying moments that will help determine how long they last and how deeply they’re felt....

FINDING MEANING

May 15, 2016

| Chase Tibbs |

Has the contemplation of your own existence ever left you feeling anxious? Every wonder and worry about the purpose and meaning of life, your life? Me too.

I’ve wondered what life, the actuality of existing, means. What does it mean to say life has purpose? On the flip side, what would it mean for me, and every human being, and the animals that cover the land, and the fish that care for the sea, and even the atoms that work beyond my knowing…what would it mean to say that all of this, all of living, is meaningless?

I know; kinda heavy stuff, right? In my past, I’ve either been afraid to ask the question or have jumped to find an answer. It’s this mystery, complexity and depth of life that makes me shutter; while it’s also the mystery, complexity and depth of life that has inspired me to imagine, and wonder, and ask challenging questions....

TO GET WHERE WE'RE GOING...

May 8, 2016

| Rev. Carolyn Lesmeister |

Regular “exercise” is part of the daily lives of many octogenarians, but for those in Blue Zone communities, that doesn’t mean what you might think.

Rather than spending extra hours at the gym or walking for the sake of accumulating miles, such people live in environments conducive to making regular movement a natural part of their everyday lives. They don’t have to go out of their way to get exercise because it is structured into what they already do.

Often, this is as simple as doing regular tasks by hand, the old-fashioned way, without the assistance of modern technology and devices....

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