The author of this prompt is Patti Digh:
Creative is a Verb: If You're Alive, You're Creative
@pattidigh
Shooting stars and the moon, in all her cycles.
Learning to let go of places and people I love
knowing they never really are far away.
Praying as the sun is rising over wide open landscapes of the North American continent
with me behind the wheel on my first (but not last) solo cross-continental road trip.
There is no separation between me and the landscapes I love.
I am incredibly blessed to have many amazing, inspiring and close friends scattered all over the world.
My friends mean the world to me. They enrich my life and give it colour and texture.
One of the most meaningful things I have ever done is teaching spiritual education classes to children.
Note to self: teach more children wherever you end up in the world.
I miss sitting by the fireplace with my grandmother while it snows outside. She was an inspiration.
My grandfather had a vegetable garden, that is still maintained by my uncle.
Maybe farming does run in the family after all.
Sushi is always pure happiness. Especially on road trips.
Fear is meant to be a mover, not a place of residence.
My night in the room that Abdu'l-Baha stayed in, in Montreal, was life-altering.
The Baha'i House of Worship in Wilmette is spectacular against a blue sky and lit up against the night.
I love to watch dancing. I also love to dance myself. I am full of motion and grace and bubbles of fun!
My assumption that the Midwest would be all cows and corn was incorrect --
it was wide open snow drifts dotted with crows and old farmhouses. It was beautiful.
I love farmland.
The peaks of Boulder, Colorado are powerful and mysterious. I felt like a character in a fairytale --
wandering the snowy streets, reading books, sipping hot chocolate. In awe. There is magic in Boulder.
There are few things as powerful as returning to the Southwestern landscape after being away.
I imagine it is like returning to the arms of a man you love and never thought you would see again.
Utah is all wide open skies and wide majestic peaks. I learned to fly in Utah.
Arizona is the home of my heart. All stone and hope and spirit. It enfolds me, I want never to leave.
I stand barefoot on the beach in L.A. six weeks after leaving Prince Edward Island.
I feel like I have time-traveled.
I met my Lord in Haifa, and spent ten blessed days immersed in a sea of prayer.
Pilgrimage is lightness of being. The rules of gravity are gone. The soul is weightless.
The Mediterranean is my haven.
It knows me, and I know it with an intimacy that is like harsh honesty of summer light.
When I stand by the Guardian's grave in London and close my eyes,
I am standing beneath the enormous, deep green shade of an ancient Cypress tree. I feel safe.
Prince Edward Island's golden summer light and white blinding winter light,
her rusty sandstone cliffs and brick red furrowed agricultural fields,
her sharp blue Atlantic Ocean.
Her thick opaque layers of bluish ice.
Her endless, wild beaches, her sharp, pungent, salty air
are rooted in my heart.
I wonder, every day, when I will go back.
My hands miss the texture of soil. I miss the smell of freshly harvested potatoes.
Red Rose tea is best enjoyed sitting at the kitchen table with Joyce Loo, on Springwillow Farms,
after a finger-numbing, potato-bagging session in the warehouse, the wind howling around us.
I think I might exist best within the tightly woven network of community.
When I feel homesick, prayer always takes me back to the landscapes I know by heart.
California is like another planet, but it is a planet of endless possibility.
This piece has gone way, way over five minutes :-)
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