"do something you've never done..."

"if you want something
you've never had,
you must do something
you've never done..."

This post might be the beginning of a new freedom for me. For the past 14 years I have been contributing to this blog. At first it was 3 times a week -- religiously. Each post included a song that had somehow served as a healing catalyst in/on my own spiritual journey.

At about year five, I gave myself permission to post, "only when the spirit moved." That meant that in some weeks I posted three or four times, and in others not so much. But always with a song. If you have read this blog for the past 14 years, you know that I have listened to, and prayed with, a lot of songs. Some of them have re-surfaced over and over again.

A few years ago, my postings became more and more infrequent. Not because I was having fewer experiences, but I just wasn't feeling as song-driven. And the thought of posting without a song as the keynote, just didn't feel like an option. So I rarely posted.

But today, I am giving myself permission to just post without it being perfectly formatted. I don't have to have the right song, or a couple of the right quotes from my primary sources -- the Bible, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and the other writings of Mary Baker Eddy. You can be assured that those sources are always standing right behind every experience that is shared.

This blog still has, as it's primary purpose, to "speak from experience," and to assure readers that "you are not alone." That has been the purpose of this blog from day one -- June 5, 2005. It is still its reason for being.

Some days there will be songs, some days there will be quotes. Some posts will just be "just the facts" of what I thought or experienced. I will try to write more frequently.

Today's post is all about doing something I've never done:

If you know me, you know that I am someone who loves routines. I love sameness. I have long held close the definition of "still," that sings of this nevertheless-ness. I am still a girl who loves a uniform. I am still the woman who eats dark chocolate for breakfast. I still use the same moisturizer I have used for decades. I still think of myself as a Colorado girl.

Of course I inhabit the words: still and stillness, for their motionless, silent, unruffled characteristics. But I have taken great comfort in the changeless nature of my spiritual name: Stillwater. If there is a word that most characterizes my sense of my nature, it is "stillness." I am very reliable. I am most myself in the quiet, motionless, changeless place of who I am.

So, for me to do something different -- well, that's such a stretch that it feels unfathomable when invitations come.

but I have learned that, for me, it is only when Love invites me into a new space, that I am able to take even the tiniest step in that direction.

For example, when my daughter was living in south Africa, I was willing to board 19 hour flights over the ocean to spend time with her. When my church asked me to do something I had never done, I found myself launching into new waters without hesitation.  The examples are many.

Earlier this year, a dear friend and colleague asked me to consider a different kind of summer. Since I love him, and the work that we share, I was willing.  So, here I am, on an adventure that - to others - may seem quite tame. But for me, it represents all that is wild and unknown. It is asking me to suspend my need to know, my need for the familiar, my hunger for being comfortable in "my own skin," or in this case, my own clothing. And trust.

So how am I reconciling this with my sense of who I am. Still water. I am still trusting Love. I am still when the winds of change seem to be tearing the tattered, worn out garments of how I see myself away from the dry bones of a lifetime of being comfortable with my surroundings and the people I know. I am still in the knowledge that though the faces and places may be unfamiliar, the work is ever the same.

I'll keep you posted. But for now, I am feeling like my youngest niece who will have her sleep-over camp experience tonight under a starry Maine sky, with the lapping waters of Long Lake and the call of loons. We will be more alike than different even though we span 60-ish years of bookending our family.

with my love -- and Hers...

Kate