WOW.
Life is crazy right now! So many things going on...I wanted to share a few things that have absolutely inspired me over the last week....first is this blog post from Brenda at THIS blog
I wish I could take credit for this beautiful piece of writing....because when I read it, I couldn't believe how THESE WORDS were so much what I am feeling these days......and I know so many others are too....enjoy this...I will be back soon....with lots of great news!
Saturday, October 27, 2007
YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION
Words fall on me. They fall all around me. Sometimes they crash, sometimes they careen or they float or dance by on invisible currents of air. Sometimes they attach themselves to me like static cling. They splatter on the sidewalk in front of me before I step in them and track them with me, knowingly or unknowingly. Sometimes they come out of the mouth of someone I know or don’t know. Often words come to me in meditation, softly whispered or emphatically stated. I know that these are words to pay attention to. Words come to me in lyrics and on signs—road signs, store signs, billboards, marquees. Sometimes they tumble from the page right into my lap, taking different shapes, different attitudes: Times New Roman, Rockwell, Modern No. 20. Words fall all around me. All day. Every day. Sometimes they land softly, and sometimes they form a crater of impact.
A particular and peculiar word landed on me a couple weeks ago. I can’t even say how or when it first nudged me, because I have a feeling I brushed it off several times before the repetition caught my attention. Sometimes my reception gets blocked or dulled and only the persistent words get through. What I can say is that this word has surfaced so many times in the past weeks, in different contexts, through different media. I’ve heard it recently in music, in magazines, consumer catalogs, in interviews, and on television—this word is suddenly landing all around me, everywhere I go.
So here it is: revolution.
As in: You say you want a revolution. American Revolution. Glorious Revolution. Cultural Revolution. She’s talking about a revolution. It’s a powerful word in our lexicon of change.
Words are instruments—instruments we can use to gauge or measure the internal and external forces that are at play in our lives or in our world. When we find a word we like the sound of (or when it finds us), it strikes a chord that reverberates—it imposes, it repeats, it appeals because it expresses a truth. That’s what I’m hearing with revolution—the repetition of the word, and the reverberation of the underlying forces behind it. It rings of the true-ness of what we need, what we feel, what we want for ourselves or for others—if not what we want to materialize, then at least what we want to think about. So I’ve found myself thinking about revolution.
I recognize lately that so many people seem to be in various states of unrest—unrested, restless. I suppose this diquietude might evidence the first rustlings of revolution. Something rubs wrong. The old order doesn’t ring as true as it used to. From restlessness grows a desire for change, a yearning for it. Maybe that desire goes unchecked for years or decades—ferments, agitates, grows subversive. Then what? Revolution can only gain momentum or find success through organization, a plan of action that powers movement, enables change. Revolution. There’s something about that word that seduces; it sounds good—a veiled promise, a hope, a possibility.
Historically, and on a grand scale, revolution has decried political systems, war, oppression of civil and human rights, but the kind of revolution I’m talking about is not so epic. I’m talking about a personal revolution. I’m talking about the unrest of the soul, the restlessness at the core of our self. I’m talking about a sincere and escalating desire for change in our heart and our life. I’m talking about a radical movement towards a renewed hope.
I’m talking about a revolution. Yours. Mine.
Our march against the old order might take us to a new job, a different continent, a more disciplined form of prayer or exercise or time management, a renewed relationship with a friend or sibling or God, a heightened sense of peace, or the realization of our heart’s desire. Most of us who are in a state of unrest are waiting for something to happen. We watch. We wait. We hope—but we try not to hope too much at the risk of being disappointed. So we wait. What we don’t realize is that we are the ones who have to lead the uprising. No one else will. We have to respond to our own desire for change, devise the plan of action that will power the movement; we have to sustain the momentum. We have to be the one to rise up in our own life. That new order, with all its promises of hope and possibility, is not only within our reach, it is of our own making.
By Brenda Pettinger
brendabird.blogspot.com
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