Long time no write! I’ve missed you!

Hi Friends,

It has been awhile! Here’s my question…do people read blogs anymore? I really want to know. Do you read blogs anymore or are they over?

I have been hanging out on Instagram  and Facebook  so if you are not following me over there, click on links and “like” and “follow”! It’s fun! I’m on Twitter too!

I have also been taking a break from podcasting but I do have several people I plan to talk to on the podcast and I can’t wait to share their stories with you. Oh my goodness so many people doing inspiring things! If you are not subscribed to the podcast, head over and subscribe (if you like it, please rate it or comment too if you have a minute!) Here’s the link for iPhone users: Great Big Yes! podcast on iTunes   and  if you don’t have an iPhone, you can find it here: Great Big Yes!  on Sound Cloud 

I just recently came back from another Holy Yoga retreat and OH MY GOSH there are so many layers to our sanctification. (Big word, huh?) But honestly, God continues to reveal Himself to me and He continues to reveal me to myself and it’s amazing. Every retreat I cry and I struggle and I realize and I discover and I confess and I leave a little freer. I’m grateful to get to be in the trenches with Him, watching people get free and stay free and set free. I am close enough to see and it’s an honor.  I think many people go into “ministry” thinking about how they will serve others.  And they will serve others but before we can serve, we have to experience. We can’t teach what we don’t know. I wanted to “do ministry” before I was ready. (Are we ever “ready”?) I started writing a blog before I knew why. I had a longing in my heart for more but I didn’t know how to find it. God is continually revealing more to me and sharpening my focus and my calling. I’m excited about the future and also realize now that there is so much within me yet to be done. I have to be honest, I have days where i think,”What am I doing? I have nothing to say. I don’t know anything.” And others where I’m bursting at the seams to share.  I used to think the sharing happened when it was all together, all wrapped up in a perfect bow but now I think the real story is in the unfolding.  The unraveling, the peeling, the recognition of our real selves in the process of unbecoming.

I started teaching again last week and A TO THE MEN! (that means Amen!) I LOVE IT! I’m teaching in a Gym which I love. I used to be a gym rat. Every day. Treadmill, elliptical, weights. I really do feel comfortable there and motivated there too but hadn’t been in awhile. So…I’m back and teaching where there are props and mirrors and walls and music and lights and it’s so much fun! Come practice with me if you are in Austin! Here’s a link to my Holy Yoga website with all the details. I hope to see you there!

So, we are in the month of Thanksgiving and soon it will be Christmas! I am working on getting my house to smell like Christmas even though I have 2 fake trees.  I’m excited about my essential oils –  Douglas Fir is what I ordered this month. If you are interested in learning more about oils or want to order some Christmas gifts, go here.  I would love to share all the ways I’m learning to use essential oils!

I would love to hear from you. What have YOU been up to? Do you have a passion, a business? Share in the comments here. I would love to know what everyone is up to and be able to support one another as we say YES! to living lives filled with passion and purpose!!

I want to share this poem with you. I am using it as our meditation this month in yoga. I love it and hope you do too.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Blessings, xo Sue

GRATITUDE

is not a passive response to something given to us, gratitude is being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. Gratitude is not something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life. Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is privilege, that we are part of something, rather than nothing. Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the color blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape. To see the full miraculous essentiality of the color blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks. To see fully, the beauty of a daughter’s face is to be fully grateful without having to seek a God to thank him. To sit among friends and strangers, hearing many voices, strange opinions; to intuit inner lives beneath surface lives, to inhabit many worlds at once in this world, to be a someone amongst all other someones, and therefore to make a conversation without saying a word, is to deepen our sense of presence and therefore our natural sense of thankfulness that everything happens both with us and without us, that we are participants and witness all at once. Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. We sit at the table part of every other person’s world while making our own world without will or effort, this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege. Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets all other presences. Being unappreciative means we are simply not paying attention.

© David Whyte
November Thoughts 2013

 

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave