It Takes Courage…
“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” —Alan Cohen
Walking a new path without knowing where it leads takes courage. So does making yourself vulnerable by speaking or signing up.
We had 27 poets contribute 37 poems for review in our Thriving Today Poetry Contest (winners will be announced at the end of September).
What have you been yearning to try, yet unwilling to make yourself vulnerable by taking that first step? Could now be the right time to say ‘yes’ to yourself and sign up, share, or attempt something new? Could now be the time to face a fear and let go of what no longer serves you?
I feel the same sense of awe at the courage of those signed up for this Saturday’s workshop: The Missing Piece: How Making Room for Lament Can Move Us from Surviving to Thriving with Terra McDaniel. It’s not easy to acknowledge and give voice to grief, yet the inner guidance that now is the time likely called most of the registrants to join us.
No matter what your inner voice is calling you to draw upon your courage to do, it’s worth setting aside a few moments to discern if now is the time to act.
May you find the courage to experience something your heart has been calling you to. And may you celebrate the courage it took to try no matter the outcome.
Showing Up
“The willingness to show up changes us, it makes us a little braver each time.”
—Brené Brown
The Courage to Act
“What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.”
— Henry David Thoreau
What to Remember When Waking
In that first
hardly noticed
moment
in which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.
What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.
What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.
To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.
To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.
You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.
Now, look through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?
Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?
—David Whyte, River Flow: New & Selected Poems (link takes you to his website)
