True confessions: For the past four months, I was struggling with my daily practice of joy. It felt flat. It felt rote. It felt empty. It felt fruitless. I showed up. I did it. I walked Allie. I photographed beauty. I prayed. I remembered to be grateful. I connected with friends. But everything felt flat. Friends suggested I might be depressed. I prayed about that, too.
Read MorePlease Help Our Unbelief
I think that most of us here in America have felt both numb and hopeful this past week. Numb with grief that we are facing yet another horrific aftermath of another horrific school shooting. But also hopeful that these brave young people are speaking out and being heard about the need for something, anything, to change.
Although I am deeply encouraged by these young people, nonetheless I am finding it hard to muster up much joy this week, let alone write about it. In every conversation I have with my fellow adults, none of us know what to do or say or hope. We filter every idea through the lens of history and wonder whether anything will ever change. But underneath all the voices in my head screaming out doubt and fear, there is a glimmer of light
Read MoreTHE POWER & PARADOX OF THE PRACTICE OF PRESENCE
I have been thinking a lot about the word presence lately.
I’ve been thinking about presence because I realize that I spend far too much of my life not being present right where I am.
Read MoreThere Is No Finish Line
Of course, we all need to make a living, and making a living doing something we love is the ultimate goal. But how can we be paid to do something we love without losing the Love in the process?
This is what I have been thinking about. . .and this is why I keep hearing: There is no finish line.
Read MoreEverything Is Waiting for You: An Antidote to the Epidemic of Loneliness
I have been reading a lot about the latest health crisis in the Western world — the epidemic of loneliness. Despite being more technologically advanced than ever before, with much of the world now digitally connected, we have paradoxically become more and more isolated as individuals. This endemic loneliness is perhaps felt most keenly by people who rely on social media and technology instead of face-to-face interaction as their primary form of connection. In my life on the road, I have become one of those people.
Read MoreGenius in the Making
It has been one of those mornings, in one of those weeks, in one of those months, in one of those l-on-n-g stretches of times when everything feels like a challenge.
Fortunately, if we've been alive long enough, we come to learn that during times like this -- when almost every single thing feels like a difficult life lesson -- we must trust in the process, no matter how long and winding and precipitous it may feel. Knowing that we are being taught EXACTLY what we need to learn. I am shown that over and over again. . .
Read MoreMy First VLOG
Last month, my dear friends at the Bill Diamond Studios invited me to come up and record some of my thoughts about my upcoming book, The Way of Being Lost: A Road Trip to My Truest Self, which will be out next month on Valentine's Day.
Read MoreNow That My Role Model is Gone
“Who’ll be my role model now that my role model is gone?” - Paul Simon
I grew up in a decade in which young people distrusted anyone over thirty. I grew up with a president vilified by much of America. I grew up in a town where people cursed and lied and hid secrets in broad daylight.
I grew up on the back lots of movie studios where the wholesome television shows like The Waltons and Happy Days were filmed. I knew those shows were make-believe, and that the war protesters and bra burners I saw on television were the real America. But despite growing up surrounded by all that paradox, I was still brought up to believe in the basic moral compass of our country and the decency and goodness of every single human being.
Read MoreLiving on the Edge of the Inside
Sometimes I feel like I have lived the American Dream in reverse. I grew up as the daughter of a movie star in a 9,000 square foot Spanish mansion and now I am a 55-year-old intentionally homeless woman trying to recreate her life and career.
Read MoreWhy New Years Resolutions Never Work . . . But Intentions Always Do
New Years resolutions never work.
Intentions always do.
Why?
It all comes down to the difference between an intention and a resolution.
Read MoreIdolatry of the Brokenness
That phrase stopped me in my tracks yesterday.
Literally.
I was walking while listening -- as I often do -- to an audio program. When I heard those words, I stood stock still and took them in. Then I replayed them over again to go deeper.
Read MoreBushwhacking
In an effort to kick start my joy practice posts after a few months of hiatus, I rekindled one of last year's joy practices -- going through my photos to see what they needed to tell me. It has been both joy-filled and more laborious than I had hoped. Joy-filled because I loved getting quiet enough to hear what I needed to hear. Laborious because, well, everything is feeling a bit more laborious than I might like these days. This paradoxical experience of my own practice gave me a lot of food for thought about my current state of mind.
When our practices become strained, it is not a sign that we should cease the practice, but rather that we must find new inroads into them as well as clear some clutter in their way.
Read MoreKeeping It Simple
Maybe I'm all talked out.
Maybe I am needing to mirror autumn, and just let my leaves fall and my branches go bare for a season.
Maybe it's just too hard to write about joy when I read about so much that is joyless -- worse than joyless, actually. Heartbreaking.
Read MoreChapter by Chapter
To live a great story means that we must stop looking to the past for our plots or to the future for our plans. We must stop being afraid of the change we are seeing right here, right now, and recognize instead that our only chance to continue writing stories at all entails the acceptance of what is happening. In fact, realizing that the changes we are seeing are our ONLY chance to live a great story. What we do right now as a planet, what we do right now to help our fellow human beings and our animal neighbors, what we do right now to make different choices in our own lives, these are our only chances to live a great story.
Read MoreLiving in the Layers
For everyone learning every day to live in the layers, not in the litter, may we all know the heavy-winged grace of scavenger angels who will help us find the way we need to go.
Read MoreThe Law of Love
It is impossible to remain silent in the face of the hatred that has not just been allowed but invited by the purported leaders of our country. When we are silent -- about the past or the present -- we are giving in to fear. When we give into fear, fear wins. Not permanently, but enough to inflict grievous damage on our world.
Read MoreWhen I Grow Up. . .
Joy has no expiry date. Joy never goes out of style. And joy always always connects us to who and what we love. To practice joy is to show up to this life in hope, compassion, connection, possibility, faith and grace. As such, I would like to suggest that joy is not an extracurricular activity but one of life's core curricula. To practice joy is to practice life, to practice love, to practice presence. To grow up to become the selves we dreamed of being when we were little children.
Read MoreYacht Rock
Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason, we sing ourselves back to joy, to hope, to love, to life, to faith. We sing ourselves whole.
Read MoreGood Morning All My Relations
When I walked out of the house this morning here in Austin, the humidity hit me like a wall of water. My glasses fogged over and within seconds I, someone who almost never sweats, was drenched. My t-shirt looked like I should be an extra in Rocky Part XII, after running fifty miles up bleacher steps while training. For someone who has lived in Northern New Mexico for a quarter century, where humidity like this only happens in a steam shower, this is uncharted territory.
Read MoreNecessary Detours: Rosie's Message
What is a road trip without detours? Well, first off, it's probably not a road trip. It's just a drive -- from where here is to wherever there is going to be.
On yesterday's detour, I was reminded to hold to the truth I have always believed: The daily acts of lovingkindness that are happening all over our planet, even as I write this, will always all ways outweigh even the most egregious and seemingly spectacular acts of hate.
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