What Qualities do you want to be Remembered For?
Hello Dear Friends!!
How goes it on these long almost summer days?
We've had a stretch of such beauty here in Central Oregon, it gladdens my heart soooo much.
May you find beauty inside or out!
Casey and I gathered the other day to do a question together from our books!
So much going on in each of our lives, and a clear missing of the way we become when we give time to this practice.
What are the qualities you want to be remembered for?
This was the question Casey chose.
We gave ourselves 9 minutes to write.
And---
It was interesting, it was very difficult to do. For both of us!
Rusty we are.
And. This particular question, at this time was a bit shocking to my system. The first thing that rose was---I have no idea what qualities are in here, in me these days.
Nothing came. Blank. Empty.
I kept writing and recognized I wanted something reflected back to me, I couldn’t find this on my own at the moment.
I continued on though---got a little less serious about it---passion, listening, depthfulness??
Then I asked myself what are the qualities others see in me?
Persistence, intense, a pain in the ass---
Then I was chuckling.
Things began unfurling a little.
I remembered the recent live event we went to with Robin Wall Kimmmerer and sensed that she touches the deepest qualities in all of us, they shine in her. It seems very likely they are here, in most of us, under the muckity muck of colonialism and capitalism and a few other isms!
Her grounded and soaring care for the world.
Her quality of presence and listening.
Reverence.
Reciprocity.
Kin one and all.
Then all the qualities I don't like in myself tumbled in.
Those, too many to name. Ugh and okay.
Settle into that awareness too.
We shared out loud,
We did the what’s rising up part
and that brought us back full circle to---
This exploration opens something up, it changes us, together and as individuals. It got a ball rolling, a heart pondering.
I want to more fully live the qualities I want to be remembered for.
Not perfect.
More.
And then, I just gotta say, this morning
as I was moving through
the beautiful light
of summer sun
dancing rainbows
on deciduous leaves
sparkling---
a few qualities popped up I want to be remembered for
that feel real and true and simple and
mostly not around at the moment!
The first is laughter---I can be a great laugher!! Love it so much. One of my absolutely favorite things. And it is contagious!
The second, joyful exuberance, most often recalled when my children were young and we’d be camping or traveling and I would love a place so much I would say “Let’s move here”---with such enthusiastic energy I would bowl them all over for a bit. And they would laugh and roll their eyes.
And dancing. Playful engaged movement!
Coming home to Wonder Uprising practice together. Such a treat and now a commitment to continue to find our way, with this as a thread, to support the great turning in us!
How about you?
What qualities do you want to be remembered for?
And if there are some---how are they showing up in your life right now?
And---this is a great question to ask gathered by a campfire, or the river, or at a family reunion or a picnic table, or lying in some sweet pea grass!
Thank you for reading. Thanks for being you. Doing you!
Much summer love to you,
Carol