{"id":177,"date":"2022-11-04T08:38:14","date_gmt":"2022-11-04T08:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/?p=177"},"modified":"2022-11-04T08:38:14","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T08:38:14","slug":"what-direction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/2022\/11\/04\/what-direction\/","title":{"rendered":"What Direction?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes folks joke with me when I tell them I am a Spiritual Director. \u00a0They ask me, \u201cWhat direction are you going?\u201d \u00a0I have had to develop a short elevator speech for this moment and now am well practiced at centering my body and bringing my hands to my chest.<\/p>\n

 
Love Wisdom from yoga<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe go deep inside, and then out into the Mystery\u201d, finishing with my arms outstretched. \u00a0This is true. \u00a0I believe the heart of the spiritual life and the heart of my work is to go deeply within my core to find my own truth and voice and then to bring it out into loving action in the world. \u00a0This is what I help others do individually and in groups. \u00a0The direction we go is always the same; in and out. \u00a0My job is to do this work in my own life as a practice for my work with others, but it isn\u2019t to direct people in the sense that I tell them where to go or what to do. \u00a0I follow their own revelation as it moves within and beyond them. \u00a0We uncover the particulars of their truth and their loving action together.<\/p>\n

This weekend I was moved my a message delivered in my faith community of transformation in the form of a hatching chick. \u00a0From the perspective of the chick, this work is quite dramatic. \u00a0It is starving and pressed from all sides and desperately needs to break free of its shell. \u00a0The work of hatching is tireless and messy, exhausting and difficult and then there is this whole big world on the other side of birth that is nothing at all like where we have emerged from.<\/p>\n

I sat listening to the description of the chick and felt in myself the wild struggle in my own life to move from constriction into freedom. \u00a0This reality is so present for me at this time that I was in and out of tears this week\u2026which is exactly where I should be as I peck away at this shell, hungry and fatigued. \u00a0And today, on this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, I also brought that impulse and truth in me out into the streets\u2026.shutting down the Lake Street bridge with other Black Lives Matter activists. \u00a0This feels like the smallest peck to a shell that doesn\u2019t want to crack, but it feels true and it feels honest. \u00a0I know my freedom is tied to the freedom of every one of us. \u00a0I need to be out in the frigid cold with others, tears streaming to remind myself that I have been, am now, deformed by the racism that permeates our lives.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t someone else\u2019s problem. \u00a0It\u2019s my problem. \u00a0And this problem is not separate at all from the ways I harm myself and others out of fear. \u00a0It is the same failure of love that I try to meet in my own shadow projected out everywhere. \u00a0Inner transformation is essential for outer transformation. \u00a0If we expect to change the whole country it starts in my heart and your heart. \u00a0This isn\u2019t a pollyanna wish for us to be nice to each other. \u00a0Love unleashed is the most powerful force there is. \u00a0Take back our Love from fear and see what happens. \u00a0What else could possibly inspire us to keep pecking when we are tired and delirious and desperate for freedom? \u00a0The only real change will come from love. \u00a0When we love one another, we will be unable to hurt one another as we do. \u00a0So start now. \u00a0Go in. \u00a0Find your truth; find your voice. \u00a0And then go out into the world with the force of Love and help the transformation birth something new.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes folks joke with me when I tell them I am a Spiritual Director. \u00a0They ask me, \u201cWhat direction are you going?\u201d \u00a0I have had to develop a short elevator speech for this moment and now am well practiced at centering my body and bringing my hands to my chest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions\/179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}