Resurrection of the Holy Fool, Rising of the Phoenix

This year Easter falls on April Fool’s Day. As some celebrate the resurrection of the JC, I’ll be celebrating the Holy Fool and the fire that brings new life.

The Holy Fool leaps into the unknown and approaches life with beginner’s mind. There is an innocence and acceptance in attitude. Life is to be lived fully. As I come out of the fog of grief and just plain exhaustion from the events of last year, I feel reborn. I embrace the Holy Fool within.

Even as the fog clears, the pain is still with me but arises less often. Now the pain feels as though it has purpose. It leads me to the love that was always there for my mother. It keeps me awake to the pain of others. Compassion has grown deeper still within my heart.

To be ground down by pain and grief is to know that you will rise again. In allowing yourself to feel it all you are the phoenix who burns itself so it may be made new.

Phoenix came to me in the form of a mandala I was drawn to in a book by Lisa Tenzin-Dolma called Healing Mandalas. That day Phoenix appeared again in the pages of a novel I was reading and a book about women and healing. Out of the ashes I am reborn, resurrected from a state of numbness. The only real death is the one we choose in this life. For what we perceive as death is just a part of the process of life.

I choose life. I am Phoenix rising from the ashes of the past. I am the Holy Fool choosing to make every moment new. The good news isn’t that a particular person in history rose from the dead. The good news is that we can rise and be reborn in every moment. We are Holy Fools moving towards the unknown with joy. We are Phoenix setting our life on fire in order to be reborn into the eternity that is now.

Abundance in a Change Purse

I have a change purse in which I keep quarters to use to buy a treat at the drug store or a book at Friends of the Library now and then. At first I was hording the coins, but recently I started to use it as an abundance practice.

Since the move last year, I’ve been feeling as though money is tight. That’s why I was collecting quarters. We used to collect them for laundry until we switched to a laundromat that uses machines that take a card. I continued to collect them in order to have some spending money. But I was reluctant to spend too much for fear of the change purse not filling up again. This awareness helped me zero in on how I was feeling about money.

The practice is to spend it not in fear but with the idea that it will always fill up again. And it does. Invariably. If I spend it, more shows up. The law of circulation played out via a change purse.

It’s the little things, the small steps; the glimpses of understanding that begin to open us up. Maybe I’ll start doing it with dollar bills in my wallet. I’ve always approached this abundance thing from a high vantage point. Beginning with let’s see if I can make $1000/month or even $4000 instead of starting closer to where I am. They say to dream big and have a higher vision, but something about that hasn’t worked for me. It has worked for some, but if it hasn’t worked for you, I invite you to give something else a try. Start small and build up.

Something in me still resists my highest good, especially in the form of financial abundance. Perhaps if I just do these simple exercises I can build my trust in the spiritual laws and principles of Life. Even though I know them and understand them at an intellectual level, I haven’t really lived them, at least not consistently. I’ve had enough experience of them to still be here willing to walk them into my life more fully.

Faith isn’t foolish. Faith is essential. It is the breath of life. We breathe knowing the next breath will come. We step out into the world knowing we’ll return to our sanctuary. And every time it does and we do. The day we don’t is the day we exchange air for love and our sanctuary will be the light.

Fire in the Head

Photo by Joshua Newton on Unsplash

Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.    

~ Arnold Glasgow

 
This past week my mind has been on fire. I don’t sleep much and in the morning I’m wide awake with ideas coursing through my mind still. I mean to get up and get moving, but I stand still, my mind all over the place. There are so many thoughts, feelings, ideas. I take notes before the thoughts burn up in yet more thoughts. It’s exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.

The ideas are still gestating. Some have deepened over the past couple of months. All this is why I haven’t written here yet. When you’re in the whirlwind it’s all you can do to capture some of it.

One of the fires was about forgiveness. I let some old feelings of anger rise up and then burn up, releasing them to sky, to Spirit. This forgiveness work seems to have been nudged by the fire in my belly. That power deep within, grounded in Earth and Spirit is something I recently claimed. I’ve lived from this place at times but have not consciously claimed it until now.

A few years ago I began to see those trying experiences in my life as walks through fire. Then, I consciously claimed being a keeper of the fire, using it to grow and heal.

Now I see the fire is within and know its creative power as my own. I burn with it instead of in it. I own it as much as it owns me. A new dance has begun.