Celebrate the Past, Celebrate the Future
I am writing about the fifth and sixth celebrations of the soul together, because they go together as sweetly as they stand alone. These two celebrations are one in the intimate flow of your lifetime – your past and your future. I was, I am, I will be is the hymn of this combined celebration.
Can you celebrate in the stream of time? This is a real question for your soul to ponder for to do it you must slip beyond time to the moment.
Below is the celebration of the past and the future expressed by one of my favorite poets, Lucille Clifton, who I once kissed on her cocoa cheek.
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me.
What did you say to yourself ten years ago? ten months ago? ten days ago? Did you make promises? Did you keep them?
What do you say to yourself today about tomorrow? next month? next year? ten years from now?
Do you have the compassionate courage to forgive yourself? Now that is something to celebrate!
If you resonate with these questions and take them to heart, to attention and to action –
can’t believe what I just wrote here as it makes me realize:
I make many promises from my wishful and loving heart, some from my genuinely caring attention, but what are the promises from my will to act, which are the promises I’ve kept and will keep? Should these be called deep promises?
Look at these questions with wonder, not judgment.
Back to what I want to urge you to do if these thoughts resonate with you. Register for my Inner Advent teleseminar. Let’s gather together (on the telephone) once a week for four weeks to discover the meaning of 2010.
I will guide you through a creative and powerful process for recollecting your year. You will learn ways to review your year and discover what it was all about. You will then release the perceptions and energies of 2010 like a sweet celebratory exhale and a kind forgiving sigh.
Celebrating Inner Advent prepares the soul, cleanses self-doubt, cultivates self-awareness, nurtures self-discovery in a way that allows us to enter into the mystery of the twelve Holy Nights with real openness. Working with your past year is working on your future year.
Inner Advent will need your heart, your attention and your action for 2-3 hours a week. The call is 60 minutes and your personal process will ask for another hour or two or more.
If you live outside the US you can join the calls using skype.
Sign up here for Inner Advent.
