Tag Archives: Tea Leaves

I came across something interesting today that I thought I would share from tealeaves:

He prayed as he breathed, forming no words and making no specific requests, only holding in his heart, like broken birds in cupped hands, all those people who were in stress or grief.

~ Ellis Peters

You can pray without words. You can pray to the universe simply by holding yourself in an attitude of prayer. No matter what you believe in, you must believe in something. Believe in God, believe in a Higher Power, believe in yourself. Believe in your own power to change things, both for yourself and for the world.

This reading captures my thoughts on prayer perfectly. There is often this inner dialogue with God, but it has no words, no visual elements, just a feeling, an essence. However, to embrace this feeling, I have to shut out the noise that fills my mind and sometimes this can be difficult. Writing can be a great way to filter out the noise, but sometimes I am hesitant to capture these words to paper. Seeing my thoughts in black and white can be a wake up call. It can also be embarrassing in a way. That is, sometimes the thoughts are just a rehashing of old emotions that don’t want to perish. You think to yourself, I’ve dealt with this, I moved on yet the words on the page tell another story.

A couple weeks ago, I had a thought come to me about Christianity. One of its basic tenets surrounds the concept of forgiveness, and it wasn’t until just recently that it really hit home. All throughout my life, I have always held the belief that everything happens for a reason, the good, the bad, and the ugly, all of it holds meaning and lessons to be learned. Needless to say, this philosophy on life has helped me process those trauma events in life that otherwise might have scared me for life. However, I recently had an experience that is hard to accept, learn from and move on. The events of this situation have in raged me literally and I have a hard time forgiving those involved. I suppose in time I will be able to move on, but at the moment, I have a hard time doing so. Thus, the concept of forgiveness entered my mind. And I realized that sometimes the power of forgiveness lies within. The ability to forgive can hold greater significance for the individual that needs to forgive, and it can be hard, so hard to forgive those who have wronged us sometimes. Yet if we cannot let go and forgive, the people that have wronged us will only continue to haunt us in our dreams and waking hours. It can also turn us bitter, and that is no way to live life.

Even though life can be filled with such pain and heartache, there is much beauty and joy that life can give us if we are willing to open our hearts and minds. Taking that step to transform the pain into joy can be a journey in itself. Often there is so much emotion that must be felt, experienced before we can move on. It’s not a simple task of simply sweeping up the pain and placing in a little jar to throw out to the sea. Rituals such as this can be good, but sometimes we need more. We need to write, let those words flow no matter how ugly the page becomes. And sometimes there are not even words to capture the feeling and that is when the visual element comes into place.

Get out the finger paints and the colors tell the story. Sometimes you might be surprise by the images that comes out. And sometimes it’s just the boldness of the colors that reveals the thoughts and feelings you have bottled up.

A couple years ago, I set aside a Saturday for a healing retreat in my own home. It wasn’t anything lavishly planned just a simple little retreat to mark the passing of a painful moment in life. It started with a large sheet of paper. And I wrote little messages, empowering message on the piece of paper. Then I started to just cover the words with color. On top of the color, I placed clippings from magazines, images of things that made me smile. And to top it off, I glued pressed flowers to the collage. So in one afternoon, I was able to transform that experience into something empowering, something beautiful.

So although I am not quite ready to transcend this experience quite yet I know I will in time.