I woke up this morning with the best of intentions, to write my blog post for the challenge first thing in the morning. I even read the challenge the evening before so I could be thinking about it as I drifted off to slept. And even more important, I wouldn’t have to check my email to find the new prompt for the day (having to check email can be an all too easy temptation). I was pleased as punch with myself …I thought this was so clever of me. Then I woke up. Sat down eager and ready to begin writing. Opened up a word doc and sat there….and sat …and sat….my fingers not moving on the keyboard… Maybe I should go recheck how that prompt was worded. It might help to copy and paste it into my word doc. Yep I did this. And while I was there in my inbox… Uh huh! Yeah! All righty! Can you see my sheepish grin? This email distraction led me to check the Facebook group just on the off chance reading a few other responses would be just the jump start I needed. I started to compose a comment, but thankfully my inner voice had something to say about that, “No you can do that later..you need to get back to writing you post.” But first I felt the urge to check my other email…maybe someone left a comment on my post from yesterday. They did. I felt both encouraged and excited by several lovely comments. You’d would think this would help me get going on my post for this morning. Not exactly. I got up and fetched a drink of water. Now that I was at the sink I was conveniently greeted with a pile of dishes, which I decided I should quickly wash up. While doing these dishes I finally admit to myself that I am in that all too familiar dance with resistance once again. So I ask myself, ” So what’s going on?” I continued to explored this line of inquiry while making breakfast, which began to give me a small glimpse into what was going on. From experience I knew going for a walk would be the most helpful thing I could right now. There is something about the rhythm of walking which helps me get to the bottom of stuff. Here’s what I discovered while out walking this morning. There is a part of me that prefers not to talk/write about spiritual stuff. That isn’t quite an accurate statement. I talk and write about spiritual stuff all the time. Just ask some of my friends who think of me as the weird friend who talks about woo, woo stuff too much. I’m definitely on a spiritual path myself. My discomfort comes up when I’m asked to explicitly and formally talk about what I believe about spirituality. And go figure…silly me…I signed up for this. It shouldn’t be surprising we would be writing on few spiritual topics during the next 30 days. Yes, I know I could have chosen another topic to write about today. There were a couple of small problems with that. For one I would have had to figured out another topic to write about. And two..and more importantly, I revoked Ms. Resistance’s driving privileges quite some time ago. I am quite committed and determined to keep my hands on the steering wheel. Now you have the background story. Let me finally get to the prompts. Here’s my current understanding of spirituality. Warning wandering ramblings ahead. Yes, I will likely contradict myself. I think this is the nature of spirituality. It’s ripe with paradox. It’s a miraculous mystery. I’m learning to not let these contradictions confound me. I’ve slowly been learning to hold it all more lightly. I’m learning to be more okay with not knowing. More comfortable and trusting in a place of uncertainty. I try to spend more time in beginners mind. For me spirit is a very fluid thing, which makes it difficult to pin down. I know it…I’ve had very intimate life changing profound experiences with it. Try to put words to these experiences and more often than not I am at a total loss. For me spirituality seems to be mostly a wordless thing. I most often find spirit in the spaces between the words. In my creative work, when I’m in the zone, tapped into flow, it will seem like it isn’t me, but spirit speaking and co-creating with me. I don’t use one word to describe the idea of God. I am comfortable using many terms for this mystery. So depending on my mood or circumstance I’ve been known to describe this Essence as God, Goddess, Source, The Universe, the Great Spirit, Mother, Father, Grandmother. Buddha mind, Inner wisdom, and so on. I think of it as energy and consciousness. I think of it as the Oneness, which embraces the Many. At times I find it helpful to personify this Essence or think of as an animal guide. This morning when I went for that walk I found spirit in a weed patch of dandelions, in a quiet morning breeze, in a child’s raucous laughter, in my own shadow stretched out across the pavement, in the opening of my heart to learn something new about myself and my own spiritual journey and the gratitude I have for this precious gift called life. And this journey continues…..