While I was away last week I got to dive into a great book, Fate and Destiny by Michael Meade. It’s a fun read for me as I so often read books from the Eastern traditions – and this is full of Western myths and Meade’s colorful and inspiring commentary.
I wonder why I’m craving a latte now? :)
Here’s an excerpt I loved:
“We are each woven into the common world of time and space, yet we are also secretly tied to things eternal. We each have a foot in time and a toehold in eternity; we have a foot in each world and a responsibility to both. We are made of the warp and woof of fate and destiny which taken together comprise that which is truly weird and inherently unique about us. Each life has its own weirdness, its indelible inner pattern and essential uniqueness that allow it to truly stand out from others.
Weird or wyrrd comes from old roots that include the German werden, meaning “to become, to grow.” The wyrrd is the way we are spun from within, the way we are shaped and styled and aimed at life. The wyrrd refers to that which we must become if we are to become our true selves. Our inner weirdness is also our divine connection. Our essential task in life is to awaken to the way that the eternal would speak through us, to learn to live out our intended personality and the inner weirdness that makes us a unique torchbearer of the flame of life. Only from this ground of destiny can an individual life truly make sense in the end.”
I love this:
“The wyrrd refers to that which we must become if we are to become our true selves. Our inner weirdness is also our divine connection.”
How are YOU weird?
Do you love your weirdness?
Or try to keep it under wraps to appear “normal,” whatever that might mean?
“It takes courage to grow up
and become who you really are.”e. e. cummings
I love this invitation to embrace our inner weirdness. There’s some kind of a relaxation I notice inside my gut with this invitation to trusting our life, trusting our uniqueness, trusting our weirdness.
Here’s our little pirate heading off for a Halloween day at school. Can you see that fantastic earring?
Of course I treasure his ways of being weird. One of them of late is that he’s been really fascinated by peg-legs. Pirates, vikings, and other characters he’s come across who’ve lost a leg in some gruesome way and walk on a peg. In fact when we were camping in southern Utah some weeks ago he spent much of the time with a plastic cup on one foot, limping around to his great delight. Weird, right? But wonderful. :) Witnessing this boy express his uniqueness brings me delight.
We’ve shared this poem before but I’m inspired to share it again this morning. It’s such a goodie. A different perspective on embracing your weirdness:
You-Shaped Hole
Sometimes the world feels inhospitable.
You feel all the ways that you and it don’t fit.
You see what’s missing, how it all could be different.
You feel as if you weren’t meant for the world, or the world wasn’t meant for you.
As if the world is “the way it is” and your discomfort with it a problem.
So you get timid.
You get quiet about what you see.
But what if this?
What if you are meant to feel the world is inhospitable, unfriendly, off-track in just the particular ways that you do?
The world has a you-shaped hole in it.
It is missing what you see.
It lacks what you know.
And so you were called into being.
To see the gap, to feel the pain of it, and to fill it.
Filling it is speaking what is missing.
Filling it is stepping into the center of the crowd, into a clearing, and saying, here, my friends, is the future. Filling it is being what is missing, becoming it.
You don’t have to do it all, but you do have to speak it. You have to tell your slice of the truth.
You do have to walk toward it with your choices, with your own being.
Then allies and energies will come to you like fireflies swirling around a light.
The roughness of the world, the off-track-ness, the folly that you see, these are the most precious gifts you will receive in this lifetime.
They are not here to distance you from the world, but to guide you into your contribution to it.
The world was made with a you-shaped hole in it.
In that way you are important.
In that way you are here to make the world.
In that way you are called.– Tara Mohr
Wishing you (and me) a wonderful day, and a courageous embracing of what makes us weird. The world needs us in all our weirdness and glory.
With love,
Erin
P.S. We’ll be unveiling our 2014 teaching schedule soon. Good stuff is coming!!
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