Ojai Musings

Last week, when I was in Ojai for a personal retreat, it rained almost the entire stay. This was glorious. I nestled into my cozy home and wrote and read and napped. The second morning I was there, I wrote this:

“It is raining. I just ran through the orange grove laughing like a kid. I don’t run much now and I don’t laugh enough. It smells of Eucalyptus and youth. It smells of summers at Interlochen. It smells of fullness. I am always amazed how in an instant I can return to my wholeness. Joy is often the missing piece. Delight. Pleasure. Laughter. And when I jostle myself into remembering, my whole body feels young and alive again. I often choose a measured and well planned life — but Oh to RUN with a buoyancy and light. To feel the spring of my feet off the earth. To feel the raindrops touch my skin – running unprotected and free–my own moment of delight shared with myself. Nourishment I’ve needed but forgot once again to provide.

I am happy to choose silence for myself, happy to run back to my nest, happy to love myself in this way – providing just what my body yearns for. I am happy to be alone but full of love.

The realization that I am free to choose how my life unfolds in every moment – that realization has enlivened me. Someone I trust deeply reminded me that all the ties that bind and all the obligatory action and all the guilty offerings are nothing in the face of inner freedom. This is not to say I stand and let everything go. But this IS to say that the Spirit — Love in Action — is never bound no matter the circumstance. There is no weight or duty in love’s never ceasing abandon. There is only and always the freedom to choose.

We are FREE to speak words of power that affect change.
We are FREE to LOVE as fully as we are capable.
We are FREE to articulate what makes us more alive and what deadens us.
We are FREE to say YES. And to say No.
We are FREE to RUN and BREATHE and LAUGH and REMEMBER who we are.

The cloak of musts and shoulds and have to’s and I know but’s can fall to our feet and we are renewed by the recognition of the freedom that we are. “

***

And today, as I picked up my notebook with all my scribblings from last week, I am reminded of that wholeness and that freedom. I commit again to choices that fill me with JOY and FREEDOM and LIGHT.

“A spacious and undefended heart finds room for everything you are and carves space for everybody else.”  -Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart