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Courage, Day Four

Stephanie Greene October 3, 2014

"All the Midianites and Amalekites (the easterners) got together, crossed the river, and made camp in the Valley of Jezreel. God's Spirit came over Gideon. He blew his ram's horn trumpet and the Abiezrites came out, ready to follow him. He dispatched messengers all through Manasseh, calling them to the battle; also to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali. They all came. Gideon said to God, "If this is right, if you are using me to save Israel as you've said, then look: I'm placing a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If dew is on the fleece only, but the floor is dry, then I know that you will use me to save Israel, as you said." That's what happened. When he got up early the next morning, he wrung out the fleece - enough dew to fill a bowl with water! Then Gideon said to God, "Don't be impatient with me, but let me say one more thing. I want to try another time with the fleece. But this time let the fleece stay dry, while the dew drenches the ground." God made it happen that very night. Only the fleece was dry while the ground was wet with dew."

I remember someone saying that it was sign of Gideon's weakness and disobedience to ask for a fleece. But I don't think so. I don't think God resented Gideon's uncertainty. I think God knew that he had been silent for a long time; that Gideon was new to the whole thing and that he needed something to remind him that God was more than an idol.

If God can handle our questions, then God can also handle our uncertainty. Later on a man would cry out to Jesus, "I believe! Help me overcome my unbelief!" Gideon too. He needed a little heart boost. And God gave it to him.

Twice.

God's mercy is not held in a fist of frustration. God's mercy is overflowing over wide open hands, spilling through his fingers and splashing over our dry hearts. God is patient with us as we sort it all out. He is firm in his calling, but he is gentle, friends.

Courage cannot be forced. If it were it wouldn't be courage - it would be coercion. And God does not coerce. God sits down under the tree, asks for an act of bravery and then fills us with his own breath, his own spirit, to complete the task. Notice that the Spirit of God had filled Gideon BEFORE he asked for a sign. God was in the asking, friends, as much as he was in the delivering.

[Tweet "God was in the asking as much as he was in the delivering."]

*July 2014

In courage
← Courage, Day FiveCourage, Day Three →

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Bee Spirit 🐝 “Her message is that sweet rewards are on their way if you are willing to get your ego out of the way and immerse yourself in the connected energy of all things. Bee Spirit is always producing honey, and miracles and magic are everywhere. When you connect with The Great Hive, you begin to vibrate in exquisite harmony with all. The bee loses its sweetness when it begins to believe that it’ is alone, because the power of the bee is it’s ability to work within a hive mind to create a great mass of sweetness to share.”
@thechurchwitch At some point I realized that moving on from past fucked up relationships had nothing to do with moving on to someone else. Actually, that pattern just kept me stuck in the same cycle of pain.⁣
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I had to be alone.⁣
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I had to learn how to be at peace while I was alone.⁣
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I had to face the wounds that surfaced every time the air around me went quiet.⁣
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I had to answer my own questions about worth, and safety, and preservation.⁣
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I had to deeply, irrevocably love myself.⁣
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Self love is a cleansing energy because it moves us away from the past, away from the wounds that have kept us cycling through the same patterns with new people.⁣
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Learn how to be alone, how to love the heart you hold in your chest, and then see what shifts. We attract what we are - so it makes sense that if we heal ourselves, we’ll attract healing. If we grow ourselves, we’ll attract growing. If we are kind with ourselves, we’ll attract kind.⁣
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Loving others is just the overflow of the love we cultivate for ourselves. Maybe write yourself a love note today and clear the energy of all the times you let a shitty shadow of love make the rules. ⁣
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PC: @lalahdelia “May you believe in your powers of discernment, and may you risk social isolation over and over again in the name of your soulful joy. May you be willing to exist on the fringes in the name of liberation, finding and belonging to those wild circles of openhearted seekers who make you feel as though you are a larger version of yourself and leaving those circles where entry always demands you wear a too-tight mask to disguise your true face… May you write your own holy verses of wild feminine lost and wild feminine regained.⁣
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Hallowed be your heathen soul, and blessed be the Holy Wild.”⁣⁣
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| Danielle Dulsky |⁣⁣
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There’s always more. My work isn’t conversion. Conversion embodies a savior complex that I’ve worked very hard to peel out of my personal operating system and I don’t have any interest whatsoever in picking that back up ever again. ⁣
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My work is spiritual wandering, energetic door holding, asking better + forbidden questions, fiercely protecting spaces that are meant to be havens for the exhausted, the spiritually abused, and the waking up. My work is divining in deserts for hidden wells and then the endless digging to see what stories have been piled up and packed down to hide that source of life. My work is messy, always unfolding, fiery, soft, ritualistic, self empowered, unashamed, evolving, open ended, and always, always starting with the heart and not the head.⁣
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And the best part of knowing that THIS is MY work, is that I don’t need it to be anyone else’s. I’ll do it. I’ll give to it and let it give back to me. I’ll create it, breathe into it, and let it grow in whatever wild, untamed way it needs to.⁣
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I have learned how to lovingly release anyone whose energy directly struggles against mine. Without anger, or judgement, or dualism (right/wrong either/or) I am getting better and better at cutting cords and letting what isn’t meant for me to drift away. It’s the only way I’ll ever be full enough, resilient enough, clear enough, and loving enough to do my own work.⁣
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Here’s to the stretches of time where we raise holy hell in our bones and forge paradise out of being so fully alive it almost burns. Here’s to the unique and fantastic work we are all meant to do and the courage it takes to do the damn thing ❤️⁣
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PC: @reena.sternberg “Her heart was wild
but I didn’t want to catch it.
I wanted to run with it
to set mine free.”
@atticuspoetry Currently: ⁣
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🐝 I’m really deeply happy. ⁣
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🐝 I’m healing myself in ways I had already reconciled to letting breathe until they were ready to be touched and that feels both vulnerable and liberating. ⁣
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🐝 I just today started reading The Holy Wild and I’ve cried like 4 times.⁣
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🐍 Bees have always held a lot of spiritual significance for me, but lately snakes have too. Which is kind of weird because they scare the hell out of me, but they represent the divine feminine, rebirth, and grounding and that speaks to me.⁣
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🐝 So much is aligning around me. I can look back and see how much work I’ve done to be right here in this moment, open to the really good, really clear unfolding Universe. I’m glad I didn’t stay lost in a life that wasn’t mine.⁣
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🐝 I wish I had a full week to spend adventuring with my kids and I can’t wait for our road trip this summer.⁣
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🐝 I’m impatiently waiting for my 23 and me results. ⁣
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🐝 This photo feels like it was from another lifetime. I guess in a way it was. But it’s a good reminder that yoga is a practice that’s meant to evolve and grow while we do.⁣
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🐝I haven’t had a bestie night with @joannbauerhomes and @micheleelizaga in so long. I’m about to just show up with wine and carbs if someone doesn’t make it happen soon. Even if it’s just me and @scottandmarley 🤷🏻‍♀️⁣
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🐝 Last night I discovered a Friends trivia game tucked in with the board games at @lovecraftphx and now I want them to host a Friends trivia night so I can win all the prizes 😉 But really, wouldn’t you come to that??⁣
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🐝 Speaking of Friends, @andrew.graceson, come in here and watch Netflix with me while we still have some Sunday left. If you’re deconstructing your faith, worldview, or God view and want to feel safe and heard in a community of the same open hearted people on the journey of dismantling and rewilding come join the Wild Spirituality group attached to my public FB page ❤️ I’m going to do a live feed on Deconstruction + LGBTQ today. This is a topic that comes up ALL THE TIME and something that deeply needs to be healed, rewritten, and embraced. These live feeds are not a place for debate (especially since this group is not for people looking to be convinced or to convince others of something). These discussions are meant to facilitate an unraveling of what we were handed so we can continue exploring the freedom and worthiness that have always been ours, but maybe have felt out of reach. This particular live feed is really important to me and I’d love to have every spiritual wanderer come find a place to land with us 🌈❤️ “If you have yet to be called an incorrigable, defiant woman,
don't worry, there is still time.”
| Clarissa Pinkola Estes | We had this whole discussion yesterday in the Wild Spirituality group about the symbolism of the serpent in pre-patriarchal Canaan; how it was a representation of the Goddess, the Divine Ancestress, and how it was an embodiment of wisdom. Not of sin, not of punishment, not of shame, not of fear. The Divine Feminine.⁣⁣
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Which turns the whole Adam and Eve story on it’s head.⁣⁣
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There are ideas we are handed and that are normalized, but if we don’t know the story behind the story how can we really attach ourselves to a belief system? I could tell you this image wasn’t altered, but you’d call bullshit. Because you know how to observe and reach conclusions for yourself. Because in context we know exactly how it was made to LOOK like something it isn’t. This is just a photo in your IG feed - it doesn’t shape our worldview or the way we live our lives, so why wouldn’t we give much more attention to uncovering the deeper stories in our faith traditions or belief systems? There’s always more to explore. And ALWAYS the exploring is where we wake up, where we find our good hearts buried under the rubble of a decaying system. ⁣
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Your good heart is worth unburying. At some point in the past few years I decided to fully embrace the reality that I am going to make mistakes. I’m going to fuck up. I’m going to wander off the path. I’m going to have to humble myself, calm myself, forgive myself, love myself right in the dead center of my own mistakes. I decided that I was going to be true to myself and that I was going to let what was true to me change and evolve as I lived my life.⁣
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It changed everything.⁣
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I started seeing myself, and other people, and the flow of life differently. Everything has been a lesson and everyone has been a teacher. Shame doesn’t have anywhere to land because I decided a long time ago that my heart is innately good and I don’t have to justify how it speaks to me. I don’t have to make anyone else comfortable with what’s true to me.⁣
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We end up doing harder things than we thought we were capable of. We heal ourselves by going all the way into the darkest parts of our stories, by naming the pain and choosing the growth. Fuck yeah it hurts. And fuck yeah it heals.⁣
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We heal.⁣
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Give yourself this gift, babes. Decide that your mistakes have a place in the story. Decide that shame doesn’t.⁣
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PC: @lightworkerslounge
Wild Spirituality Podcast