A message received as I wake from sleep penetrates into my consciousness
— a bell steadily ringing. It changes something.
So much is going on at once and I was beginning to feel a bit panicky. Then, I remembered. This is how it feels when I am filling and emptying at the same time.
- as if I am gathering breath and preparing to dive.
As if I am diving into a wave even as I am the wave,
pulling back from the shore,
gathering all the tiny stones and broken shells and starfish up into myself before…. whoosh, the return.
Gathering. Emptying. Ebbing. Flowing.
I understand this now.
This morning, I came down from sleep and made tea and curled up under a soft wool blanket in my pjs and soft socks. I sat in my morning corner, watching the sun rise over the farm. A stray thought found me and I reached for my notebook to write it down.
Creativity is a breathing process, I wrote. A living flow of inhale and exhale.
It was the kind of thought that rises from the deep place where threads are being woven into things I can’t yet see. In the receptive, open mindedness of early morning, I let my mind wander over to the previous page of my journal where earlier this morning, I’d scribbled a few words as I woke from a dream: Open the church. Become the medicine. Bring the message and let the ministry open around you.
I didn’t remember having written those words. Didn’t remember the dream out of which they’d come, like a punctuation mark, as I opened my eyes.
I did know what they pointed to.
This.
Right here.
This Substack blog.
Where I pour out the words that gather inside of me onto this blank page.
This space, outside of me, where you can find them.
This is my church. You have your own - and your own message and your medicine (and ministry) is opening around you.
Even as you’re raising your children or walking your dog or tending a loved one or teaching a classroom. Each day, as you move through your everyday, ordinary daily life, your medicine and your message are already pouring out of you.
We all draw the gifts of the world toward us, gathering wisdom as we notice and learn. Each collaging what we discover into something uniquely our own.
Even if we never ever ever step foot inside a formal house of worship. We are all always in church— and by church I don’t mean that we are all Christian or even that we all believe in God.
Church is wherever we are because wherever we are, the force of Love—which some people call “The Divine” and other people call other names for the gift of being alive—is there.
There’s a secret message encoded in this truth. Wherever you are, Love is there.
The secret message is this: You are the force of Love.
As you gather your medicine from within (and from the world around you), as you share your gifts with others, your message and ministry opens around you.
Wherever you are. Whatever your offering. Whatever medicine you have for the world.
Curious about Magic School?
We’re on a one-month pause right now but you can look around.
Come and see. Come and play!
A new thing I’m doing
- Best of this blog.
At the cafe where I write, they have a little star next to a few menu items and, beside the star, the word: Suggested. I kind of love that - it’s as if the chef is winking from the kitchen, saying, Psst! Try this one. This section is like that. A roundup of the posts where I’ve managed to say what I was trying to say and maybe learned something along the way.
I am not going to finish everything before I die. Neither are you. Allow me to introduce you to a friend. The Perfectionist and her alter-ego, The One Who Blesses
Dissolving the spell of shame, blame and reactivity that keeps us scared, small and stuck in the war zone. Who are you to be this big, this loud, this smart, this beautiful, this wild? Who are you to hold this much joy, this much creativity, this much power?
What was I made for? Naming the invisible. Of course, I went to the Barbie movie. In a theater. With other people. A lot of other people. Many wearing pink.
Read The Flow Journals, my conversation with The Guides, over here.
Read the back story of my work at Soul Caller Origins, here.
Bring me your Qs and I’ll do my best to answer them over here.
Happy October, loves!
May your days be restful, joyful and full of discovery.
xxoo
Amy