A Lewis Carroll Inspired Spiritual Practice for a Long Over-due Mary Oliver Monday

Evidence by Mary Oliver from Evidence (Beacon Press)

Where do I live? If I had no address, as many people
do not, I could nevertheless say that I lived in the
same town as the lilies of the field, and the still
waters.

Spring, and all through the neighborhood now there are
strong men tending flowers.

Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But
all beautiful things, inherently, have this function -
to excite the viewers toward sublime thought. Glory
to the world, that good teacher.

Among the swans there is none called the least, or
the greatest.

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in
singing, especially when singing is not necessarily
prescribed.

As for the body, it is solid and strong and curious
and full of detail; it wants to polish itself; it
wants to love another body; it is the only vessel in
the world that can hold, in a mix of power and
sweetness: words, song, gesture, passion, ideas,
ingenuity, devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

As of this morning, I've begun a new spiritual practice:  believing six impossible things before breakfast.  

I'm not sure how the idea actually came to me.  One minute I was writing about how blah and uninspired I feel and the next I was channeling the White Queen. 

I confess I haven't read any of Lewis Carroll's Alice books in their entirety (although stay tuned for a future Carpe Libris summer edition in which I plan on expanding my horizons and reading Alice in lieu of the usual Mary Poppins this year) so I don't know if the White Queen is a good spiritual teacher or not.  But I do know that setting aside half an hour a day for a spiritual practice-- be it meditation, journaling, yoga, or even stretching my imagination to entertain new possibilities-- is good.  

Lately I've felt constrained by perceived impossibilities-- doors appear to be locked, shut, or too small and difficult to fit through so I don't bother trying.  I have been feeling not unlike this picture of Alice yet I resigned myself to the situation rather than looking for a way out. This feeling of confinement started to impact the choices I made on a daily basis and this morning I finally realized I was feeling more than a little cramped. 

Choosing to spend some time each day believing-- or at least practicing believing-- that there are other choices, other possibilities, may not change reality but it likely will change my perception of reality.  It's kind of like prayer.  After many years of study and practice I've come to understand that the power of prayer isn't that it changes or influences God or a specific situation, the real power of prayer is that it changes me.  And that's an impossibility worth believing in.  

Softest of Mornings and The Lifeline of Awareness and Gratitude

Softest of Mornings by Mary Oliver from Long Life:  Essays and Other Writings (DaCapo Press)
Softest of mornings, hello.
And what will you do today, I wonder,
   to my heart?
And how much honey can the heart stand, I wonder,
   before it must break?

This is trivial, or nothing:  a snail
   climbing a trellis of leaves
     and the blue trumpets of flowers.

No doubt clocks are ticking loudly
   all over the world.
I don't hear them.  The snail's pale horns
   extend and wave this way and that
as her fingers-body shuffles forward, leaving behind
   the silvery path of her slime.

Oh, softest of mornings, how shall I break this?
How shall I move away from the snail, and the flowers?
How shall I go on, with my introspective and ambitious life?


As I was paging through books looking for a poem for this Mary Oliver Monday  I was struck by this one. And not because it speaks to my experience, as is usually the case with what I usually write about; rather because this morning I hear the clock ticking so I haven't been looking at the leaves.

Instead of my normal oozing into the soft morning, today I jumped out of bed, barely glancing out the window and that only to see if it was raining yet, before making coffee and making my bed (in that order) so I could be at my desk and get an early start on work.  Maybe it's the charged air brought about by the approaching storm that has me humming and vibrating and active this morning. Maybe it's the energy behind some work projects that I want to hold onto and perpetuate this week.  Or maybe it's just the knowledge that the pages of my "to do" notebook are filling up faster than things are being crossed out.  Whatever it is, my focus this morning has been on my desk, not on the world outside my window.

And that got me to thinking about awareness and gratitude.

A friend and I were talking about this subject last week.  We'd both been in dark places recently and were sharing how we could to stop ourselves from sliding back down that slippery slope of self-pity and woe that often ends with a canonball into the pit of despair. He said that he has come to realize that lack of gratitude leads to those dark places.  If he holds in one hand something as simple as the blessing of sight and all that comes along with that, it far outweighs any misery he might be tempted to hold onto with the other.  Opening his eyes for a moment of awareness and gratitude each day have become essential for him.

So this morning I may not have spent time looking out my window yet but I can take a moment to be thankful for what I can see here at my desk.  A  soy candle that smells like cedar wood and pine needles reminds me of the trees when I don't have time to get out and walk among them.  The flame of that candle that I light as I sit down to work is an acknowledgment of the presence of the Holy and the Spirit that animates my work and connects it to something bigger.  Icons of Julian of Norwich, Brigid and Melangell  honor the legacy of wise women who have gone before me and the small stack of books on the corner is a nod to the creativity of contemporary women who inspire me.  The containers of Sharpies behind my computer remind me of a young contemporary woman who inspires me, Malala Yousafzai, and makes me ever the more grateful for the freedom and resources I have so often taken for granted in my own pursuit of knowledge.  And the pink and red apples in my grandmother's old milk glass bowl  . . . well the blessings that come along with that sight are far too numerous even to begin to count.

Wherever

It Was Early by Mary Oliver from Evidence (Beacon Press)
It was early,
  which has always been my hour
    to begin looking
      at the world

and of course,
  even in the darkness,
    to begin
      listening into it,

especially
  under the pines
    where the owl lives
      and sometimes calls out

as I walk by,
  as he did
    on this morning.
      So many gifts!

What do they mean?
  In the marshes
    where the pink light
      was just arriving

the mink
  with his bristle tail
    was stalking
      the soft-eared mice,

and in the pines
  the cones were heavy,
    each one
      ordained to open.

Sometimes I need
  only to stand
    wherever I am
      to be blessed.

Little mink, let me watch you.
  Little mice, run and run.
    Dear pine cone, let me hold you
      as you open.

Edward Hopper - Cape Cod Morning

For some reason, I've been awake early these past few mornings.  It's still dark outside when I open my eyes so I lie in bed and listen to the world waking up outside my window.  At first I wonder how I've managed to sleep through the insect noises during the night.  The crickets and cicadas drown out the sounds of the pre-dawn commuters on Connecticut Avenue.  As the traffic picks up, so do the birds arriving in the backyard looking for breakfast.  Before too long I'll start hearing the early morning honks of geese flying overhead but for now it's mainly the tweets and whistles of robins, wrens, and the occasional caws of a murder of crows.

With the birds, comes a tinge of light.  I've been pulling back my curtains, trying to see the sunrise but the horizon is obscured by trees and houses.  Rather than a dramatic, colorful unfolding, day light arrives like a faulty halogen light, taking its time getting brighter.    By the time the bus pauses at the stop nearby and announces in its automated female voice, "L8, Friendship Heights," morning has arrived.

Sometimes I read Mary Oliver and wonder if I'd be more of a morning person if I could step out of my house and walk a few yards into the woods, to the beach, or to a nearby pond.  And sometimes I need only to stand (or lie) wherever I am to be blessed.

Mary Oliver Monday - Don't tell the CDC we're starting an epidemic

Mozart, for Example by Mary Oliver from Thirst (Beacon Press)
All the quick notes
Mozart didn’t have time to use
before he entered the cloud boat

are falling now from the beaks
of the finches
that have gathered from the joyous summer

into the hard winter
and, like Mozart, they speak of nothingbut light and delight,

though it is true, the heavy blades of the world
are still pounding underneath.
And this is what you can do too, maybe,

if you live simply and with a lyrical heart
in the cumbered neighborhoods or even,
as Mozart sometimes managed to, in a palace,

offering tune after tune after tune,
making some hard-hearted prince
prudent and kind, just by being happy.


I'm posting this poem in honor of someone who will likely never see it.  I don't know much about him.  I don't know his name or where he lives.  I don't know who his friends or family are.  I don't even know if he has friends or family, although I can't imagine he doesn't.  I don't know if he's gay or straight, partnered or single.  I don't know if he's Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu or Zoroastrian or unaffiliated or other.  

All I know is that just when I needed a shot of positive energy this weekend, there he was, bouncing down Connecticut Avenue by the firehouse in Kensington, beaming at everyone he saw.  He exuded joy and I found myself smiling as I drove past, infected by his contagious smile.  

So thank you, happy-guy-walking-down-the-street with your backpack on.  Today I'll do my best to help spread the epidemic of light and delight, just by being happy.  

In case you need a little motivation and don't have a bouncy guy in a backpack walking down the street to inspire you, here's a 30 second clip from the brilliant movie, Amadeus, of Tom Hulce as Mozart laughing. 

Looking at the grass on Mary Oliver Monday

The Singular and Cheerful Life by Mary Oliver from Evidence (Beacon Press)

The singular and cheerful life

of any flower

in anyone's garden

or any still unowned field--

if there are any--

catches me

by the heart,

by its color

by its obedience

to the holiest of laws:

be alive

until you are not.

Ragweed,

pale violet bull thistle,

morning glories curling

through the field corn;

those princes of everything green--

the grasses

of which there are truly

an uncountable company,

each on its singular stem

striving

to rise and ripen.

What, in the earth world,

is there not to be amazed by

and to be steadied by

and to cherish?

Oh, my dear heart,

my own dear heart,

full of hesitations,

questions, choice of directions,

look at the world.

Behold the morning glory,

the meanest flower, the ragweed, the thistle.

Look at the grass.

"Look at the grass." 

It was what I told myself as I stood on a narrow dirt path with the Irish Sea raging below me.  In the not-too-far-away distance was Middle Mouse, or Ynys Badrig (Patrick's Island), home to razorbills and cormorants and the northern most point in Wales.  But I couldn't pause to do any bird spotting or stop and take in the dramatic view.  My only focus was getting back the path I'd come across without being swept over the edge by the gale force winds or, more likely, stumbling over my own feet and tumbling down the rocky hill into the sea below me. 

The initial walk to where I was hadn't been nearly as petrifying.  I was wandering around the churchyard at Llanbadrig on Anglesey Island, trying to find a solitary place to perch when I first spied the path.

Many of my fellow pilgrims had gone away from the churchyard, up and over the hills to a bench where the Dalai Lama had reportedly sat for a while before proclaiming the seascape the most beautiful view he'd ever seen.  Others remained inside the sanctuary of the small church, admiring the Islamic inspired stained glass windows, chatting with the ladies filling the church with flowers for Sunday, and trying to stay out of the fierce wind. 

I was walking among the graves, as I often like to do, but even the presence of those dearly departed felt like too much company for me at the time.  So when I looked over the wall and saw the narrow grass and dirt path leading away from the church and the hill with the amazing view, I decided to follow it.

And follow it I did, marveling at the ombre of blues as sea met sky in the distance, wondering if the path really went through the mass of gorse ahead (as you can see by the picture it did), and wondering about the centuries of footsteps that had flattened and worn away the grass.  Perhaps even St. Patrick himself had walked along that very cliff after he'd recovered from his little ship wreck adventure. 

At the point where there was little spare land between my feet and a rocky cove below, the path turned away from the sea and wound its way up into green fields spotted with suspicious ewes who bleated warnings at their lambs as I approached. 

I debated walking further but decided not to disturb the sheep so I turned to head back and I froze.  For the first time I noticed how narrow the path was, how uneven, how undefined at places. And that wind!  Did it just start blowing that hard or had I not noticed the effort it took to remain upright as it howled around me?  I thought about turning around again and continuing along the path through the sheep fields but rather than heading back towards the road, it looked like it just continued along the sea, albeit at a safer distance from the rocks and water.

So I made my way back the way I came, placing one foot in front of the other, testing the sureness of the path, feeling for hidden dips or unseen stones that would send me careening down into the angry waters of the Irish Sea, the sight of which now caused my heart to quicken with fear.  I avoided looking at the drop by focusing my peripheral vision on the other side of the path.  "Look at the grass," I'd tell myself, look at the grass."  Of course, I made it back just fine and in one piece, albeit with my muscles a bit more tense than when I started.

It wasn't until I got home and was looking at the pictures from Llanbadrig that I realized the lesson for me in that walk.  Too often I embark upon a path with fear and hesitancy, rather than wonder and curiosity.  I get caught up in the narrowness of the track and the fierceness of the wind and when I do that, I expend much more energy-- mental and physical-- in inching forward than if I just trusted the way and admired the view.  Or even worse, I stay stuck where I am, in a place of perceived safety.  That walk along the path at St. Patrick's Church has become a touchstone for me, a reminder to act out of a place of trust and love rather than fear and doubt.  For as Mary Oliver writes, "What, in the earth world/is there not to be amazed by/and to be steadied by . . . Look at the grass."

Mary Oliver Monday - The Summer Day for a perfect summer day

THE SUMMER DAY by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems:  Volume One (Beacon Press)
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Sometimes it's a good idea to hold on to a thing, to keep the obvious tucked away until the time isn't merely good, rather, exquisitely perfect, to make your oblation.  Then, you can pull out what has been saved with a flourish and cry, "Voila!" turning something ubiquitous into something magical.

In as many times as I've posted a Mary Oliver poem on this blog, I've shied away from "The Summer Day,"  preferring to offer poems that are less well known and definitely less well quoted.  But something about this morning's clear blue sky, the breeze ruffling the grass, the sound of the cicadas in the maple tree outside my bedroom window, and the work I have to do the rest of the day made me realize it is indeed the perfect day for "The Summer Day."

Voila!  I give you the magic of Mary Oliver.

A particular eastern tiger swallow tail
visiting my wildflower garden

The magic for me this morning comes in hearing something new in a poem that I've read a gazillion
times before.  As with many people, I'm often left pondering the punch of the poem's last lines.  What captured my attention today though were the stepping stones of the first lines, that movement from the universal (literally) to the particularity of one specific grasshopper.

So, rather than viewing little details as distractions that lead me away from the picture work I have to do today, the invitation to me is to see in the particulars the opportunity to pay attention.  Quite a challenge for an Enneagram 7 and a Myers Briggs INFP but I'll give it a go, because who am I to argue with a Mary Oliver poem?

Mary Oliver Monday - A Lot of Images Meaning "Thanks"

THE MORNING WALK by Mary Oliver from Long Life:  Essays and Other Writings
(Da Capo Press)

There are a lot of words meaning thanks.
Some you can only whisper.
Others you can only sing.
The pewee whistles instead.
The snake turns in circles,
the beaver slaps his tail
on the surface of the pond.
The deer in the pinewoods stamps his hoof.
Goldfinches shine as they float through the air.
A person, sometimes, will hum a little Mahler.
Or put arms around old oak tree.
Or take out lovely pencil and notebook and find a few
touching, kissing words.


Or a person, sometimes, will pull out her camera and try to capture moments that inspired such overwhelming feelings of gratitude, perhaps in order to return to those images with a notebook and pencil at a later date, inviting the words to come after they've had some time to simmer. 

That's the work I find I'm doing now so I thought on this Mary Oliver Monday I'd share some images of thanks with you and invite you to share what has you saying, "Thanks," lately.



The resilience of nature
 

Doors opening
 

The survival of ancient wisdom


 




The beauty of perspective
 



Firm footholds on bumpy paths

                     

 



Blue sky, blue sea, blue bell . . . so many shades of blue.



This view



Curiosity and Daring



Artistic whimsy



The pleasure of discovering small surprises



Connecting with the ancestors

Vibrant colors



Acting without fear





Revisiting thin places

A Glimmer of Light for a Rainy Mary Oliver Monday

Poppies by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems:  Volume One (Beacon Press)
The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't

sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?

So many invitations to be happy and opportunities to be washed in the river of earthly delight this rainy Monday morning . . . the moment early this morning when there was a sudden absence of noise-- no traffic, no birds-- and all I could hear was the rain hitting the leaves on the maple tree outside my bedroom window, looking out that same window when I got out of bed an hour later and seeing a teeny tiny rabbit eating violets in the back yard, a breakfast of strong coffee and good watermelon and a morning of quiet writing time at my desk.  Oh-- and of course the poppies I planted last weekend nodding their red-heads in the rain.

What is inviting you to delight, to holiness, to redemption today?

Some Questions You Might Ask on a Mary Oliver Monday

Some Questions You Might Ask by Mary Oliver from House of Light (Beacon Press)
Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?
Who has it, and who doesn't?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?
In between loads of laundry I've been reading a lot today, looking for poems to use in tomorrow's program on The Spirituality of Poetry that I'll be leading at Cathedral Crossroads.  This is one I had bookmarked and as I haven't celebrated Mary Oliver Monday in several weeks, I decided to post it as today's offering.

Lately I've been skirting around the edges of articles and books that deal with the science of consciousness.  Some of these talk about the idea of the soul and look to answer questions like the one Mary Oliver raises.  Who has one?  Can it be measured?  What's it made of?  Where does it reside?   All that theorizing fascinates me but the question that I am most often ask in relation to the subject is the one I pose today:  How goes it with your soul?

Trying to create light without a spark

The Buddha’s Last Instruction by Mary Oliver from House of Light  (Beacon Press)

"Make of yourself a light"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal-a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

 

 

Too bad Buddha's last words didn't come with step by step instructions.  I've been wondering these past several days how I make myself a light when I'm feeling well smoored. 

 

This feeling is due to some personal situations that are vying for my attention, demanding an investment of chunks of time and energy around which I have to find ways to work.  This fragmentation doesn't bother me nearly as much when I have time each day to write.  Putting pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard) is like weaving a slender thread that holds all the pieces together.  I need that time to sit down and work things out on the page, get lost in a character's story, or wrestle with a poem. 

 

Those moments allow me to hold everything else together so that even if the rest of my life is loosely bound, it's still anchored.  Without that tethering activity, I feel like it takes a tremendous amount of energy to hold onto the stuff of my life with both hands.  Yet I also realize that same holding on is what keeps me from making myself a light. 

 

And there's the rub. 

 

Almost every creation myth begins with an element of chaos so maybe it's time to let go, to let my life shatter so I can begin the process of picking up the pieces and see what emerges from the rubble.

A Word for the New Year

We Shake with Joy by Mary Oliver from Evidence (Beacon Press)
We shake with joy, we shake with grief,
What at time they have, these two
housed as they are in the same body.



The practice of choosing a word (or having one chosen for me) for the new year began several years ago on the first-ever New Year's Eve retreat I attended.  After we'd finished reflecting on and letting go of the year that had passed, the retreat leader went around to everyone gathered and offered up a basket with little folded rectangles of stiff paper with a single word printed on each. As we chose one and opened it, we were invited to share with the circle our guiding word for the coming year. 

I remember being impressed and inspired as people shared their words-- grace, forgiveness, healing, courage, transformation.  It seemed like everyone was pulling out weighty words.  Powerful words.  Words that could echo like thunder or shine like a beacon in the year to come.  The basket finally made it to me and I expectantly unfolded my paper and read, "Beauty." 

I was miffed.

Beauty seemed like such a fluff word compared to all the others.  I felt like the universe had armed everyone else with a treasure trove of virtues and sent them off to boldly explore and conquer the new year while I got a pat on the head and a lollipop.  But I stuck with beauty throughout the year and, as it turned out, the universe knew what it was doing.  

One November I was on a train traveling through the Grampians in Scotland, a gentleman in the seat across from my showed me how to spot the herds of red deer that were grazing in the burnished heather.  It took a while for my eyes to distinguish the shapes of the deer in the distance but once I got the hang of it, I discovered the mountains were teeming with the creatures.  Beauty opened up to me in much the same way that year.  Once I had the word and started learning how to recognize it, I soon discovered it was all around me, despite what the trials and tribulations of the previous year had left me thinking.  

The next year I was back at the same retreat center, with many of the same people in the circle, when I chose the word gratitude, which opened me up in a similar way.  The year after that the word was discipline.  That was a word I consciously chose for myself feeling I needed it . . . an experiment that didn't go so well.    The next year I didn't choose a word but the year after that I was given the only word left in the basket after a New Year's retreat I helped planned but couldn't attend due to a family emergency:  Risk.  The retreat leader apologized but I knew that was the word I was meant to have.  That was the year in which my full time job ended, I spent the summer traveling to distant shores (often on my own), I started working for myself, I completely discarded my dissertation research and topic and began work on a new project, and I finally decided to take my writing seriously . . .  and more importantly, telling people I was doing just that.  (Accountability is another word I need but haven't chosen yet.)

In 2010 my spiritual director chose my word for me-- spontaneity.  In 2011 the word was gift, a word received as a gift in a dream on New Year's Eve.  In 2012 I was back to picking a square of folded up paper and got love.  (And, in hindsight, I did get a lot of love last year, albeit none of the romantic nature.)

And this year, this year the word is joy.  Thus the Mary Oliver poem above. 

Joy is actually a good word for this year.  Last year ended on a wave of sorrow swept in by the events in the world.  In recent years I wouldn't  have allowed myself to feel grief or joy or any intense emotion in between.  Somehow along the way I had come to confuse detachment with non-attachment. All the great spiritual traditions have a component of non-attachment to them-- not holding onto the things of the world too tightly.  But I wasn't just not holding on, I kept my fists ungratefully closed.  I thought that if I didn't let myself feel any extreme emotion, life would be better, easier . . .   By avoiding pain though, I also missed out on elation.  And you can't have one without the other.

So this year I'm ready to shake myself up a bit.  I've been letting myself succumb to moments of pure, surprising, joy in simple things: an abundance of my favorite apples at the farmer's market on Saturday, the splash of yellow from a solitary persistent dandelion blooming in the frost covered grass in the park where I walk, an email from a friend whom I haven't been in touch with for far too long, the start of season three of Downton Abbey, and the tentative end to the NHL lock out.  I'm holding all these things lightly,  just trying to enjoy them when they happen and not expect too much (especially in terms of that last one on my list).  I'm simply keeping my hands open to receive all that 2013 will bring.

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Curious as to what your word for 2013 is?  Here's the list I used for the New Year's retreat I led this year.  To find your word, look at the number on the list that corresponds to the day of your birth.

1.      Faith

2.      Balance

3.      Transformation

4.      Delight

5.      Grace

6.      Patience

7.      Compassion

8.      Gratitude

9.      Adventure

10.   Courage 

11. Forgiveness

12. Intention

13. Discipline

14. Creativity

15. Abundance

16. Openness

17. Love

18. Integrity

19. Healing

20. Generosity

21. Play

22. Joy

23. Trust

24. Listen

25. Harmony

26. Simplicity

27. Inspiration

28. Healing

29. Peace

30. Please

31. Awe