Our life journeys include wide & interconnected circles. "Living Courage" is a monthly invitation to pause, reflect, and align your courageous heart through living the principles and practices of Courage work. In 2018, each month will focus on one of the 12 Courage & Renewal Touchstones in order to integrate them into our daily lives. This is about practice, not perfection - and extends beyond the boundaries of a circle or retreat.
Daily practice fosters undivided lives that honor our inner knowing and our outer expression. I have pared the language of each touchstone down to its core as a way to focus on the invitational nature each moment and interaction offers us.
May we find our way to ground and radiate our wholeness & hearts. May the practices of Living Courage and the companionship of the Touchstones, assist when we wobble in these challenging times.
January Touchstone:
Extend and receive welcome. We support each other by giving and receiving hospitality.
Poem/Third Thing:
From Here to There by Naomi Shihab Nye
Everything needs readiness,
baskets emptied,
gladiolus spear placed in
a glass.
Before you begin,
before you let yourself move
from here to there,
you attend to little things,
a cat’s mouth open and crying,
a thin parade of ants
along the sill.
Something in the way we are made
wants order. Wants three pillows
lined across the head of the bed,
wants porches swept and shades raised.
Before we begin. Before we head into
those secret rooms no one else
has cleaned for years,
where memories rest in heaps,
without cabinets,
and have only to be touched lightly
to shine.
Prompts:
As you begin this year, this day, this conversation, how might you “ready” things to extend welcome?
What new welcomes do you wish or need to offer?
If you have participated in a Circle of Trust, you are warmly invited to join us for "Living Courage Calls" once a month for six months to live the questions and touchstones in community.
With warmth and welcome,
Holly