Faith, Family, & Focaccia

A faith and culture Mommy blog, because real life gets all mixed together like that.

Spinning

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Recently life has been more than a bit frantic. Working, parenting, housekeeping, wifeing… it has all been pilling up and pulling me round until I am wondering whether dizziness is just my perpetual reality.

And so, as an attempted remedy, I spent some time this morning in grounding prayer. Prayer in the  sense not of speaking, but of listening. Of sitting in silence for the still small voice to speak to me.

And today, that voice spoke to my soul in lines of poetry.


Spinning

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Like a child’s spinning top

I launch myself at frantic speed

seeking the velocity

to let me balance on a tiny point of contact.

 

But

in my enthusiasm,

or anxiety,

I push too hard.

No elegant display of spinning speed,

no ballerina poised on point am I.

I am the wobbling, panicked top about to 

CRASH

 

And

in my panic I reach out,

reach down,

my hand and heart both grasping for the solid ground,

for grounding, 

for a source of steadiness outside myself. 

 

There

in that contact 

I remember:

that I am spinning on a world that spins as well,

and the Master Spinner does not need my feeble speed

To make the world go round.

I can rest here,

and know

I’m spinning still in glorious mystery.

Author: Serena Gideon Rice

In early 2011 my family moved our home, temporarily, from New Jersey to Milan, Italy. In the process I quit what had been my dream job conducting policy-directed social science research, to focus on my other dream job, raising our two young children. The three-year adventure was exciting, exhausting, disorienting, fulfilling, and countless other contradictions. It also birthed in me a desire to share my reflections on life's joys and challenges with anyone who cares to reflect with me. Now that we have returned to the US I'm finding that the new perspective I gained in Europe has come with me, and gives me a whole new way of interacting with my home. There's still so much to learn and share! I hope you'll share the journey, and add your own lessons to my daily education.

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