courage

Courage is one of those loaded words that everyone reacts to but no one really comprehends. Or maybe that's just me. I am ashamed at the degree to which I've stayed small and comfortable. On the other hand, I don't think courage is big and bold and loud. I think courage is sitting with someone in their grief. It's being honest with those you know you're going to disappoint. Courage is not just loving; courage is letting someone love you. Courage is letting go, when it isn't hanging on.

(Book club ladies - don't read this until Sunday)

I'm anxiously awaiting my super awesome book club retreat this weekend, and struggling to read Brené Brown's Daring Greatly. When you're confronted reading a book that is about being both vulnerable and courageous, it's kind of hard to feel like you're being very brave. I was going to just blindly push through, but this prompt made that untenable. But maybe just keeping on reading (even though I invariably fall asleep) will be that small step that reverberates like a roaring lion.

wild

It's an image anyone who has been around a while has seen a number of times - the author as a young girl, windswept, safe against the mountain air in a vibrant pink sweater, eyes closed, golden skinned, a beatific smile upon her face.

She's an image that calls to me. She's a touchstone of who I am or, at the least, of who I was at one point and would like to be again. The image captures both a moment in time, and a way of being. I gauge my life by how far away that girl seems to me - by how tightly wound my hair is, how tired my skin, how missing that dimpled smile.

There is freedom in that girl. A sense of both adventure and security that I feel neither of in recent days. Life has somehow been tamed, shrunken, and made less comfortable. I crave the mountain top, the wind-swept, the wild.

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I have come very late to Kat McNally's wonderful Spring mind cleanse, April Moon.

I may not have time to catch up on all the prompts, but appreciate the opportunity to reflect each day on Kat's one-word meditations.