On This Blessed Day

Happy Blogiversary to me… 

      Happy Blogiversary to me… 

            Happy Blogiversary… 

                  Happy Blogiversary… 

 6 blessed YEARS!!!!!

On this blessed day I celebrate six years of blogging. Yesterday it snowed again. I was quite content. I had intended to start writing this post and catch up on visiting friends blogs after meditating. I worked with this meditation practice from Rav Yael. After sitting with her questions and reciting the passage from psalms in silence for half an hour the gift of song emerged. Ironically it was a six-hour birthing process. The purple link below is the result, please click it to listen and enjoy a three minute pause in your day: 

Ani T'filati

I am my prayer to you. 

(Psalm 69:14)

Music Copyright © 2014 Laura Hegfield All rights reserved

While this is not a perfect professional recording, and not the finished arrangement it is still rough AND it is truly a prayer offering recorded on my Mac from my bed-top "studio". This is best listened to with headphones or ear buds if you have them. Close your eyes, feel the prayer that YOU are, simply breathing, being alive. Contemplate all the ways you interact with and bless others with your presence. Often we are not even aware how much a smile, eyes looking into eyes recognizing a person as a person means to them, to us.

After that I was able to write this post. Originally this blog was called "Creativity AS a Spiritual Practice" but the more I blogged the clearer it became that Creativity IS a Spiritual Practice. I had no idea (who does?) how many things would change from that first morning through this one, the adventures through sickness and health my family and friends would endure. Who would continue to live on this earth and who would live in the memories of our hearts. I surely did not, could not have imagined writing 753 posts, or how many people I would meet through this blog, how many hearts and souls would touch mine from all around the world.

I felt a little courageous and started writing one February morning six years ago. I picked up a camera to photograph my journey and fell in love, fall in love more and more with the beauty of Creation every day. I learned how to record podcasts as a teaching tool for meditation when I could no longer go out and teach art and yoga or facilitate SoulCollage workshops in person as I had thought I was going to continue doing back then. (Although I am now able to lead meditation live to a sweet small group in my community). I learned to play with Garageband on my Mac, layering my voice. I've been writing songs since I was twelve, but technology has allowed me to express my creative self in this form more fully than ever. 

Since the morning I wrote that first post I've fallen on the floor many times and needed help to stand up and walk. And I've climbed mountains, metaphoric and granite on the very same legs that some days feel as though they too are made of stone. I've trotted the globe with my voice and back in time to childhood. I still do when I am fatigued due to foreign accent syndrome and dysarthria  special effects gifted by MS. Yet no matter if I'm having a "bed" day or a mobile, energetic one, faith has deepened for me, gratitude has expanded, my ability to discern blessings in unexpected circumstances and places has developed, again, more than I could have possibly imagined six years ago. 

In the majority of moments I recognize that my life is far more full than empty.

buried below snow

shoots are wending their way up

we each find a path

Thank you for following along, for all that you teach me, for your kindness, your patience, your generosity of spirit, your forgiveness (when I don't make it over to your blog to visit or respond to e-mails in a timely fashion). Most of all, thank you for handling my honest, vulnerable heart with compassion in your comments. I am so very grateful, so completely blessed.

Please join us in sharing the love up-close with I Heart Macro Week 40, the linky opens @ 7pm EST Saturday evening through Wednesday evening. 

Linking to:

1440

my sky

haiku my heart

skywatch friday

weekly topshot

ein stuck himmel

friday photo journal

weekend reflections
waterworld wednesday

share the joy thursday
guest heart thursday

the weekend in black and white