This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

At the heart of the Sacred Rebellion enquiry is the question of how we let our lights shine, how we bring our gifts to the world, how we respond to the call in our hearts to contribute what we love to the world.  How we start to do this, how we continue to do this and how we roll with what the path presents to us when we walk it.

I'm so interested in what it takes for us to truly step in to this vulnerable and alive space where we put ourselves on the line and speak our hearts desire so we might start to create a life we once only dreamed of.

This week I have been thinking about what it's taken for me to start writing, to start saying what it is that I feel called to share with others.  And one of the biggest factors involved in my starting and coming back to it again and again is that I have had a very small, passionate, flickering and alive flame which could have easily (and could still very easily) been blown out.  And I have put this flame in the hands of people who I know will encourage me, nurture my vulnerability and keep me coming back to the vulnerable place even when I want to return to safety and smallness.

I want to say this to you - that when there's something you dream of, the thing that's in the corner of your mind that you'd love to do, an idea that you feel is unrealistic or impossible - please share it with someone you trust.  So they can hold you,  encourage you and to support you in its birth.  Some ideas may never come to fruition - but that's not the point.  We need to keep the sparks coming, creating a culture of welcome for whatever inspiration and creativity wants to come.

And this culture is not created by us alone, it's created by a community of support for the things we hold sacred - and that community is people, kind audiences that are not critical or exacting, but warm and gently welcoming of our contribution.  In the future we may (probably!) face the critics, but at the start of things, the flame needs caring for so as not to be blown out.  It needs to be held in loving and gentle hands for it to gain strength.  Mother lions do not put their cubs into battle as soon as they are born, they are protected, nurtured, fed and cared for until they are strong enough to fend for themselves.  And so it is with our baby ideas, they naturally need the same treatment.

Even if that presence you share an idea with is me - you could message me on this page privately just so you have spoken it once into the world to start with.   That witness could be your pet ? It could be a tree ? The only criteria is that it's a loving presence that you trust will hold your flame gently and lightly with the eyes and ears of encouragement and warmth.

Power comes from timing, not agression.

Hello everyone, I am writing from a wonderfully sunny Cornwall where we've had very rainy and windy weather forecasts and yet the winter sun continues to shine.  And this morning I went to pick Matthew, my boyfriend, up from a golf lesson he was having and caught the end of the wisdom being spoken by his teacher.

When I got there he said the words "Matthew, power comes from timing, not aggression"..... So, Matthew is a rugby player and used to play to a very high standard which means golf is a certain kind of challenge for him, where he has to relax and use the geometry and wisdom of his body rather than his physicality.  And it's taking a while for this to sink in, it's taking a while for him to trust.

And the universe organised itself today so that I got to hear this line being spoken.  For ages now I have been considering the question of timing but had never put it next to 'aggression' in this way.  I have been enquiring in to how we can speak up at the moment when our words can be most effective.  What if we acted when our actions were most likely to produce the outcomes that are intended.  Golf is my spiritual teacher in so many ways.  So this was today's lesson spoken loud and clear to me.

When we get to grips with timing, with knowing when to act, when to speak, how to artfully interrupt the life happening around us with our own input, this can be a huge opening where all sorts of possibilities open up.  This idea calls into question our habitual way of being - maybe we deal with challenges the same way each time they arise, and maybe we end up in the same kind of trouble again and again - and maybe this is purely a matter of timing?

If I am not for myself....

....who will be for me ?

This post is about spending time with ourselves, giving ourselves the attention we crave and getting close in to this person we know so well.   And yet we are in flight from this self, distracting ourselves from simply being for so much of our day.

When was the last time you sat still and encountered yourself ? When did you last sit and appreciate what you are, what you bring, the gift that is you ? 

I have noticed that people who are bringing themselves daringly to their lives are ones who are comfortable with themselves - to the point where they can mess up, they can create and they can put themselves on the line without it mortifying them when it goes wrong.  I have noticed that when we spend some time with ourselves, get intimate with ourselves, we get to be more rebellious, and fuller expressions of the life that we are.  Because taking risks makes sense, we know who we are and that the world around us doesn't have to determine how we feel about ourselves.  That's our job.

The Christmas Field.

I want to invite you to the Christmas field.  It's a field beyond right and wrong doing, a field that doesn't even know what time is or what a turkey tastes like.  It's a field where we're infused with what's important about life, where we can soak up the feeling of relatedness and care that is afforded to us simply because we are human.

This field is beautiful, cared for, welcoming and warm and when we stand in it we can see the light in others and others can see the light in us.  We can see the good intention, the part of each of us that's always trying our best given our circumstances, history and personality.  The grass is soft underfoot and the light gently bathes us as we breathe in the crisp and cooling breeze.  In this field, our bodies open and relax into the space around us and we melt into the air, expanding to a size way wider, deeper and far reaching than the limitations of our bodies.

In this field, forgiveness is obvious and we welcome all the opportunities that come our way to practice how to do this elusive thing.   We look upon the world as an endless stream of possibilities for us to experience the wonder and the freedom of letting ourselves and everyone off the hook for whatever they have done, whatever they are doing, whatever they might be expected to do during this season.  We open ourselves up to a different story about life and we create the space for a new reality, where people do something other than what we expect. 

May this field be transported to every home, every supermarket check out, every train, every intersection or traffic light crossing.  And may this field become our hearts, for this beautiful Christmas time.

This moment is not a stepping stone to somewhere else.

This very moment is it. And so much of the time we're preparing for something, getting ready for some future reality that we're working on so that everything will be as it should be. We skip this moment because there's some future moment that will be our ultimate fulfillment. 

So rarely do we remember that THIS IS IT. There is nothing else, this is what we've been preparing for, our lives have been aimed at this moment, this very spot in history that holds us in its hands.

For me this moment is sitting alone in my cottage, with the TV on in the background, the WWF (world wrestling foundation!) duvet from when my brother was little, resting on my lap and tap tap tapping away on my laptop as I let this moment in. My skin feels gentle as I let it seep in to me and try my best to accept that this ordinariness, this nothingness, this small moment is IT.

Christmas is an invitation to gentleness.

In recent months, I have had someone truly show me the meaning of this line. It invites me into an enquiry that often makes me feel really mad.  Because most of the time I am right.  And I am sure you are too. And I don't want to let go of that. 

I'm noticing that my rightness is small, it's narrow, so fearful, so rigid, sometimes bolshy, insensitive and vicious even. I can't see much from my rightness, other than the small matter of me being better than someone else, having more sophisticated thoughts or views.  I'm certainly not connected, warm or inclusive.  I'm defensive, guarded and stubbornly attached.  And it's so often in the name of feeling safe, secure and is trying to be a poor imitation of the true ground that I'm seeking to feel held by. 

I also see how my rightness is embodied, it's a reaction, a defense that belongs to my body most of the time.  Even if I try and let go by changing my thoughts, it creeps back again later on when I replay the conflict in my mind and I get to feel even more right when I repeat all the ways I am justified in my head.  And so it goes on, and on, and on, and on.

So this is the experiment - it's in the body.  It's in the observing of what it physically feels like to take this righteous stance, to stand a 'ground' that's not a ground at all, it's a brittle opinion that holds us back from loving, that holds us back from acceptance and kindness too.

My adventure is into the radical and scary experiment of letting go and relaxing in the moment of madness, returning to this body, where all the rightness is held, and watching my capacity to free myself from the mess, the tangle, the tightness.  I know the gentleness that my body can hold, the blurred line of my existence and the relaxation into the world around me that feels way more like what life should be like. 

And I'm embarking on this as we step into the Christmas season here in East Sheen, London.  Where there will be fights over the turkey timing,  differences of opinion of what presents we should buy which family members, complaints about all the little things that get brought up with lots of family around and lots of communal living to take our place in. 

A tribute to my sister.

So I have been thinking about writing this post for a while.  And I'm feeling like there's no way I could do justice to writing about my sister in a simple blog post.  There's just so much to say about her, and I honestly don't think I can put words to the connection I know we both feel.  But I'm going to try and say it, and here goes.

On the right you can see a picture of us.  And even when I look at this photo I feel emotional.  I'm crying as I write this, feeling into the 'shared soul' I feel we have.

We were like peas in a pod growing up - and the fighting, laughing, playing and inventing in that pod definitely played a huge part in shaping me into the kind of person I am today.  I attribute my sense of humour, my trouble making abilities and my ability to annoy people to this pea pod.  Hollie was how I got to practice at being annoying.  She was easily annoyed so it was great training ground.  And I loved her for it because she was my ultimate challenge.  If I could make her laugh when she was really annoyed, I was the happiest person in the world.

Now we are 'grown up' (well I still feel like I am 14 years old so I'm not sure about that bit) I am so amazed by what we are bringing to the world, our families, our communities and our friends.  We support each other in our stand for honesty, openness, ordinariness, vulnerability, development, being daring and extending ourselves to our wider worlds by bringing our internal and external lives to these blog things. 

Just a few things you should know about my sister:

• As she parents her beautiful children (well they are actually mine, she just looks after them A LOT), I am being parented too.  She has taught me so much about how to be with human beings so that they feel loved, allowed to be themselves and held firmly through the thick and thin of journeying towards being a fully fledged human in this world.
• My sister is relentlessly kind.  She brings her generosity, her love, her giftedness, her creativity and her humour to her family and friends each day with such grace and abandon.  And people feel loved around her. 
• When she has negative feelings about people or feels annoyed with them, she has the capacity to look inside herself, find out what's going on and truly forgive people in a way I am amazed by and so deeply thankful for.
• She always speaks up for what she believes in, even when it's really difficult or causes trouble.  Her belief in what's true and real permeates everything she gets up to in the world. 
• She loves me very much and always understands what I am on about even when many people think I am bonkers - and this bullet point made me cry just a little bit more so I can now barely see what I'm typing. 
• We talk so quickly to each other about really deep things that when we are in conversation alone, I'm pretty sure not many people would get what on earth we are on about.  
• Every time I go to a workshop and spend lots of time and money learning something, it just takes one small conversation for her to get an automatic download of what I have been learning because she's so clever, emotionally intelligent and probably a psychic.  
• She always brings me little things that she knows I will like if I am at home working.  And it's her joy to give little things because she knows it will make people happy.  
• She loves her children in such a deep, fearless and full on way that's filled with laughter, tears, tantrums, domestic melt downs and hilarity.  She sees the humour with her children and is their guide, their friend and their soul mate.  She truly plays with them, and gets out of their way so they can be the unadulterated, untethered expressions of life that they are. 

So, I feel deeply blessed to have the fierce love of this sister, this person who knows me, loves me, sees me and gets me in a way that makes it wonderful to be here, a way that makes me joyfully cry my eyes out when I write a blog about her.  Thank you Hollie Holden (your real name is still Hollie Prior btw) for loving me and for sharing life with me.

If anyone is interested in knowing this incredible person, she has a wonderful blog and facebook page called Hollie Holden - Notes on Living and Loving which has me laugh, reflect and learn each day that she posts.