It’s Friday, and I’m meeting up with the community of Five Minute Friday at Lisa-Jo Baker’s Tales from a Gypsy Mama for some free writing. Here are the rules: follow the prompt, no extreme editing, write for five minutes flat and encourage the person who linked up just before you. Consider writing with us?
Today’s word is LOOK.
{GO}
I sit in the company of some wise people last night, writers, and we talk about vulnerability. Vulnerability that pulls back curtains.
Vulnerability that is purposeful, as it holds up the beauty and pain of a life, words in cupped hands and says look and know you are not alone.
We are surrounded by huge windows, and I think about all the glass portals of words and gesture and story and tears that allow us to look and see.
Into our hearts, her heart, his.
Into another’s experience.
The windows, these glimpses, into understanding.
______
To look can be to search for what is lost. The shepherd leaves the 99 others behind to look everywhere for his one little lost sheep. The woman with the lost coin looks high and low, under every piece of furniture, in every nook and cranny for her treasure.
Then she rejoices. It is found! And her neighbors, they rejoice, too.
_____
To look and really see is to sacrifice.
To sacrifice judgments.
To sacrifice time and attention.
To sacrifice my way.
To sacrifice the broken that things are for the Beauty of what can be.
To look is to take pause, gaze long out the glass and see what lies beyond me.
{STOP}
Connecting through the power of stories written, spoken and lived
that’s why I love the blogworld…people vulnerable enough to share life – real and raw and beautiful – and people wiling to sacrifice all those things you mentioned above to partake in that life as well.
thank you.
Amen!
WOW!
Bless you for sharing.
Bless you, and thank you for meeting me/us here.
Love it! Gives me chills Ashley – you are such a beautifully gifted writer! XO
I was touched to see some of the common threads in what you and I wrote on our blogs today. Really moved by your words and your honesty…bless you, Shira!
Thank you Ashley! It does seem there was something in the air today :) Your words always take me away to another place – bless you right back! XO
Wow, you do THIS in 5 minutes. In the last 5 minutes, all I’ve done is drink a cup of coffee! :)Your words, as always are wise and beautiful. Thank you for your purposeful vulnerablility! Love you!
Haha! You are awesome. I had downed two cups of coffee in preparation for my five minutes. :-)
Absolutely beautiful! Thank you for sharing…love to pause and take in your touching words!
Thank you, Darcy. So happy to see your words and imagine your precious smiling, loving self.
I echo what Ali says – 5 minutes! A heart would have to be teeming with words in order to do that! Who could doubt – you were born to write! And I echo what Shira says!
I’ve long believed in the Absolute Value of deep purposeful looking, but I’ve never put together how that involves Sacrifice. But of course, you’re absolutely right. You’ve given me a new and broadened perspective and I’m grateful! xx
I keep thinking the words are going to dry up, and maybe someday they will, but in the meantime, I guess I’ll let ’em keep running. :-) I have a hard time keeping the flow in the banks of Five, but it’s good for me. Maybe you’ll join in sometime, Mama! xoxo
Oh girl you exponentially expand 5 minutes into a rich writing art form. A new measurement of time is there. I want to sit in the quiet that is your own inner-sanctum of creativity. And sip tea and talk words.
You touched on something powerful here, Elizabeth — the way that slowing to see and stop and hold and tell does cause us to enter into a different sort of (timeless) time. Though I’ve got to say, five minutes flies, and I always feel like I’m just getting started. How I’d love to sip tea and talk words with you sometime…in person. Thankful for the ways that we’re able to do that in these spaces, though. xoxo
You are so right – I’ve never thought of sacrifice going with looking – but you’re so right. It does! Time and time again. :-) Wonderful, graceful words.
Thank you, dear one. Blessed by your words today, too.
Oh. This – “To sacrifice the broken that things are for the Beauty of what can be.” Amen, Ashley, this is faith, hope, surrender. Reading this felt like a holy moment.
Wow. Faith, hope, surrender…holy. Thank you, Amber.
Beautiful.. “to look and really see is to sacrifice”, I love that! xx
Your creative gift allows you to describe life so articulately. Your thoughts and musings draw us in. There are so many more thoughts and observations to be shared.
I can’t believe I’ve still got more to say. :-)