This is a repost of Julie Herman‘s most recent b.read.crumbs post. I’ll be following her lead (as I so often do) in my b.read.crumbs post next week. We might have a theme running through the year. Let me know if you can spot it.

When you see a woman on a throne, looking out over her terrain, you might be excused for thinking she is a queen, or at the very least, a farmer’s wife.
I like very much the idea of a woman: sitting, doing nothing but gazing. At what, I don’t much care. She can choose her own view.
Do you have a particular sitting spot, where the view brings you lots of pithy thoughts?
I am not a High Priestess but I do have an active spiritual faith. And my favorite sitting spots are places that I consider to be sacred ones.
1) The Water Wall Park in Houston, by the Houston Galleria, is one such. There are several vantage points to choose from, but my personal favorite is to sit or stand right at the central point of the curve and let the sight and sound of all that water pouring down lift me up. (It’s an optical illusion, but who cares while you’re experiencing it?)
2) My front porch. The floor is painted a bright yellow, the roof and trim a deep scarlet. Outside the room are trees, some of them old enough that my arms cannot span their trunk. There sitting with closed eyes means experiencing the breeze tickling my arms and the birdsong tickling my heart.
3) Walking along almost any creek. There are always places to pause, to gather in the sight of flowers, to wonder how they got there, and there, and there. Inevitably, when you spend some time in stillness, one of the local inhabitants will come to check out the intruder, and possibly welcome you to their midst.

There are more, of course, but I’ll stop my list here at three. All of them have the element of nature. All envelop me in the knowledge that there’s a whole lot out there that’s bigger than I am. All of them allow me some measure of quietude.
Enlightenment so often comes only after a bit of silence, doesn’t it? Lately, my faith in humanity has been tested. Friends have made comments. (No, not going into details, this is a blog post, not a midnight confession. no popcorn needed.) Their comments wounded me deeply in that moment. Yet, when I sat a bit in stillness, listening to what lay underneath their words, I found could not take offense.
Because those words came from a place of empathy. Ignorance too, but basically those words that made my ears ring were a statement of my friend’s ability to feel what others felt. And that I cannot fault. Well not entirely. There was also a good does of ignorance behind the statement. I am grateful that I was able to reflect on this a bit before slashing out in the heat of the moment — for while wounds heal, offense festers. And the way I felt, I would definitely have offended. As it was, we could then, later (much later) have a conversation that enlightened both of us.
Enlightenment so often creeps in only after we sit with an experience and our own emotional receptors have stopped firing at high velocity. Only then can we try to imagine what caused someone to do or say just the thing that caused an emotional response within me.
It takes time, Enlightenment. Sometimes quite a lot of time. And sometimes it doesn’t come in time to stop me from making a dang fool of myself.
I’m getting better at it, the sitting with things to allow for that cleared vision to come into focus. That ah-ha that comes after that quiet moment of reflection, when what is hidden behind sharp words is revealed. Their hope. Their fear. Their inner anguish. I can untangle those from my own hopes and fears, and maybe prevent increasing the anguish we both feel.
In following our initial impulses to the core before we allow them past the threshold of our lips, we demonstrate (if not actually attain) the wisdom usually assigned to those who have gained some inner wisdom.
And yet, by remaining silent, do we hide our own feelings to salve the others? More and more, I’ve found myself saying, “I’ll have to think about that one for a bit.” It’s been a good change for me.
And now, to celebrate having gotten my work done for the week, I’m off to find a sacred place to sit and gaze and be quiet. To look for enlightenment on any number of things. Or just to enjoy that moment. ‘Cause that is sacred too.
One Good Thing: I hired a writing coach, not so much for writing, although that may wind up being part of what they do for me. For now, though Taryn is serving as my accountability and organization expert. They have gotten me into a system that helps me break my work into bite size pieces and give each a value that matches the task at hand. Importantly, that value includes both the hours it will take me to complete that task, and how much emotional effort it takes from me to get to it and through it. If you’re looking for someone to help you get organized in your writing, to hold you accountable, or to give you insightful feedback, I’d highly recommend checking out Taryn and their partner Aurora at thestorywilds.com .
There are more, of course, but I’ll stop my list here at three. All of them have the element of nature. All envelop me in the knowledge that there’s a whole lot out there that’s bigger than I am. All of them allow me some measure of quietude.
Enlightenment so often comes only after a bit of silence, doesn’t it? Lately, my faith in humanity has been tested. Friends have made comments. (No, not going into details, this is a blog post, not a midnight confession. no popcorn needed.) Their comments wounded me deeply in that moment. Yet, when I sat a bit in stillness, listening to what lay underneath their words, I found could not take offense.
Because those words came from a place of empathy. Ignorance too, but basically those words that made my ears ring were a statement of my friend’s ability to feel what others felt. And that I cannot fault. Well not entirely. There was also a good does of ignorance behind the statement. I am grateful that I was able to reflect on this a bit before slashing out in the heat of the moment — for while wounds heal, offense festers. And the way I felt, I would definitely have offended. As it was, we could then, later (much later) have a conversation that enlightened both of us.
Enlightenment so often creeps in only after we sit with an experience and our own emotional receptors have stopped firing at high velocity. Only then can we try to imagine what caused someone to do or say just the thing that caused an emotional response within me.
It takes time, Enlightenment. Sometimes quite a lot of time. And sometimes it doesn’t come in time to stop me from making a dang fool of myself.
I’m getting better at it, the sitting with things to allow for that cleared vision to come into focus. That ah-ha that comes after that quiet moment of reflection, when what is hidden behind sharp words is revealed. Their hope. Their fear. Their inner anguish. I can untangle those from my own hopes and fears, and maybe prevent increasing the anguish we both feel.
In following our initial impulses to the core before we allow them past the threshold of our lips, we demonstrate (if not actually attain) the wisdom usually assigned to those who have gained some inner wisdom.
And yet, by remaining silent, do we hide our own feelings to salve the others? More and more, I’ve found myself saying, “I’ll have to think about that one for a bit.” It’s been a good change for me.
And now, to celebrate having gotten my work done for the week, I’m off to find a sacred place to sit and gaze and be quiet. To look for enlightenment on any number of things. Or just to enjoy that moment. ‘Cause that is sacred too.
One Good Thing: I hired a writing coach, not so much for writing, although that may wind up being part of what they do for me. For now, though Taryn is serving as my accountability and organization expert. They have gotten me into a system that helps me break my work into bite size pieces and give each a value that matches the task at hand. Importantly, that value includes both the hours it will take me to complete that task, and how much emotional effort it takes from me to get to it and through it. If you’re looking for someone to help you get organized in your writing, to hold you accountable, or to give you insightful feedback, I’d highly recommend checking out Taryn and their partner Aurora at thestorywilds.com .