Creating Space For Your Fire To Burn

Hello,

This is Shana.

And I just wanted to talk to you today a little bit about meditation.

I know in the beginning,

It can seem almost impossible like a struggle.

Hard to sit still hard to quiet the mind.

But what I would like to invite you to think about is what meditation really is.

It's not sitting in a certain pose for you know,

Hours at a time.

It can appear in many different forms,

Like going for a walk or washing your dishes and having your hand in the water.

So I just invite you today to think about ways you can build meditation into your day.

Or just making space in your mind in your day.

Because meditation really is just a way to quiet all the chatter and thoughts happening in our minds.

And I'd like to read you a poem today by Judy Brown,

Titled Fire,

Which really illustrates the importance of these spaces in our lives.

What makes a fire burn is space between the logs,

A breathing space,

Too much of a good thing,

Too many logs,

Packed in too tight,

Can douse the flames almost as surely as a pail of water would.

So building fires requires attention to the spaces in between,

As much as to the wood.

When we're able to build open spaces in the same way,

We have learned to pile on the logs,

Then we can come to see how it is fuel and absence of the fuel together that makes fire possible.

We only need to lay a log lightly from time to time.

A fire grows simply because the space is there with openings in which the flame that knows just how it wants to burn can find its way.