Amy Hoppock's Blog, page 2

Haiku Practice

Lectio Divina is a practice of “reading under the eye of God, until the heart is moved.” It’s the practice of reading slowly, with attention to words or phrases that “sparkle” up from the text, and pausing with intention to savor the words, with curiosity about what they might speak to your soul. It hit me this morning in my monthly Haiku group that Haiku is so similar. It’s pausing to see the moment, object, idea, or feeling. Then we hold it up to the light. See it from different angles and distill the essence into the container of seventeen syllables. Sometimes the three Haiku share a similar theme. It’s easy to discern. This month I didn’t find the theme, until we shared our reflections. I think you’ll see what unfolded were interesting themes and surprising overlaps. I found myself wanting to jot down phrases from the reflections written by Michael and Davin. The Invitation Grab a pen. Light a candle. The invitation as you watch is to note any words or phrases that stand out. Jot them down. Invite that word, phrase, or idea to walk with you for a few days. (I feel like there is a week’s worth of ideas that I’ll be exploring.) Maybe us that phrase as an invitation to writing your own Haiku? Use it to inspire a poem, painting or photo. I’ve been asked when I’m going to do a Haiku Workshop. . . Soon! Are you interested in learning about the practice of Haiku, some ideas for how to get started, and maybe even sharing a few of your own Haiku and responses? Let me know here. I’ll share more details via email. If you like these questions, please consider SUBSCRIBING to The Art of Powering Down; Questions to Recharge Your Soul… Every week there is a question that will gently challenge you, encourage you, or help you live your life with more intention, grace, and purpose. (Sharing these reflections and questions with friends is the greatest compliment!)

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Free Relief: A Golf Question for Life

It had to happen at some point. A question taken straight from the game of golf. (#golfmom) I have two junior golfers. I was caddying for my daughter when she hit a ball that ended up on top of a sprinkler in a hole.  Another mom and I surveyed the situation, and not being golf pros made a mom decision that she couldn’t hit the ball from there and we picked up the ball and dropped it outside of the hole.  Later I consulted my son who is a rule expert and he said, “You can always take free relief when your ball hits a man-made obstacle.” If the ball hits a tree, don’t hit the trunk when swinging. Or if the ball is in long grass, swing hard.   Free relief when you encounter a man-made obstacle really struck me. Golf is a game of rules and the fact there is a specific rule for “man-made obstacles” made me smile and it caused me to start thinking.  Is there an obstacle that I can give myself permission to take free relief from?   Free relief in golf means that you can move the ball to the left, right, or back (never forward, you can’t take an advantage by moving the ball any closer to the hole. ) The free relief rule is an acknowledgment that sometimes there are obstacles that just can’t be worked around and you can move to a better position without penalty.  It’s free (no added strokes) and it’s relief because you don’t have to hit some impossible shot.  Is there a place in your life that you need to take free relief? Is there an obstacle, a pattern of thought, a situation looming large that if you just “moved the ball” a little bit to the left, right, or back you might be able to get through the obstacle?  Free relief is permission not to quit playing, but to admit, “I can’t quite make this shot without some help.“ Free relief is a phrase that we don’t use in everyday life, (maybe we should!) There is something peaceful and calming about the words and idea that there is relief and it’s without penalty (free!)  I love how words are used and it’s so interesting to me that the phrase and term in golf is “take free relief.” Take, the player has to be willing to take it.  It’s there, it’s an option, but the choice must be made to take it.  Is there a place in your life where free relief may be an option but you aren’t taking it? Is there a trial that if you stepped back and looked with new eyes, maybe if you changed your approach the answer would be different?  Have you been trying to solve a problem using the same tools over and over? What would happen if you stepped back?  From the moment my son explained to me the concept of “free relief” that phrase has been on repeat in my brain.  I love the idea that we can “take” free relief.   Is there an obstacle that you need to take free relief from?  If you like these questions, please consider SUBSCRIBING to The Art of Powering Down; Questions to Recharge Your Soul… Every week there is a question that will gently challenge you, encourage you, or help you live your life with more intention, grace, and purpose. (Sharing these reflections and questions with friends is the greatest compliment!)

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What is Saving Your Life Right Now?

“What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.” Barbara Brown Taylor- An Altar in the World I was reminded of this question from Barbara Brown Taylor herself, when I heard her ask it in a zoom presentation she did on dirt. (I enjoy her work so much, I’ll show up with dirt and follow where she leads. She did a 90-minute reflection on dirt, and I loved it!) In the presentation, she said if your answer was NetFlix and mac & cheese you might want to dig a bit deeper. I’m going to take her to task on that because a Netflix show IS saving my life right now! But we will get there! This is one of those questions that is a personal toolbox question. A question that can be used when we need a reset or feel ourselves starting to flail a bit. It’s a perfect question for the start of 2021. Collectively we started with so much hope, ready for a new beginning. Quickly (for me at least) the reality set in that 2020, the pandemic, etc. didn’t magically end when we turned the calendar. This question is a reminder to look at the little things. We all need saving. We need help, courage, bravery to face the things we must face. Sometimes the act of naming those things moves them from the column of ordinary to special, or from rote to ritual. Rote is something we do habitually without thinking. Rituals are behaviors we repeat over and over, with meaning and reverences. What in your life by naming honoring can you move from rote to ritual? “When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?” ― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog What is saving my life right now? (in no particular order) Call the Midwife- If a BBC show can be considered sacred, this is. Every. Single. Episode leaves me pondering love, kindness, truth, beauty, faith. It’s a meditation on the transformative power of community. It’s a reminder that nothing is ordinary, that goodness is found in the dark corners. The nuns are inspirational in their simple yet profound kindness. The young midwives, figuring out how to be human in a world that is all too human. It’s magic and I watch an episode almost every night. (And I’m reading the books the series is based on. I recommend the books too! They are better than the series and that is saying something. They add so much context to the stories AND the characters. . all based on real people!) Morning Pages-This is a new practice. Julia Cameron author of, The Artist’s Way suggests writing three pages, longhand every morning. This is a practice that I have heard of and I’m all for it in theory. But, I’ve never undertaken the practice myself. Julia Cameron has a new book, The Listening Path. I started reading that, interested in the topic and practice. She insists in the introduction that Morning Pages are essential for anyone serious about the practice of listening. I thought I would try the practice. Here’s what I’ve learned. A) It’s hard. B) It’s a discipline. C) every day something in my long-form rambling clarifies an idea or concern. Every. Single. Day something from my morning pages has been an important insight. I keep picking up the pen out of curiosity about what I will learn. Cookbooks– A few months ago I realized that cooking for my family was not saving my life. It was annoying. When I stopped googling recipes and started using cookbooks the quality of food increased! Cooking dinner stopped being a chore and started being an important ritual. It’s magic. I moved cooking dinner from rote to ritual, by changing one thing, the source. I’m picky about the cookbooks I use. They must be written by a chef. I want recipes from people who know about chemistry and flavor. Now, planning meals for my family is FUN and the food is pretty good too! Current Favorite Cookbooks: Salt Fat Acid Heat (Persianish Rice with Slow-Roasted Salmon) Food 52 Genius Recipies (Perfect Oatmeal-a recipe for oatmeal. Yes. Life-changing) Milk Street Cookish (Chicken and Rice Noodles in ginger-hoisin broth) What is saving your life right now? If you name it and move it from rote to ritual you honor the gift it gives. If you like these questions, please consider SUBSCRIBING to The Art of Powering Down; Questions to Recharge Your Soul… Every week there is a question that will gently challenge you, encourage you, or help you live your life with more intention, grace, and purpose. (Sharing these reflections and questions with friends is the greatest compliment!)

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Monthly Haiku: On Form, Humility & Morn

In December I had great hopes for starting 2021 with energy, renewed writing, questions, and haiku projects. And then January started. Earlier this month someone told me that they never count January as the first of the year. January is a month to catch up, clean up, and renew. Save all that energy of new beginnings for February she said. I’m leaning hard into that idea! So if January caught you flat-footed and straining to engage. Let’s look ahead to February, or March, April. . . there are no rules! Yesterday Michael, Davin, and I had our monthly Zoom Haiku call. That time never ceases to amaze me. I love the topics, ideas, and lessons learned when we share our Haikus. Want to listen in… Haibun (Reflection on Haiku) Form is exposed in  The winter: we see structure Trees bare, grass gone: form Amy Hoppock The idea of form exposed in winter is not my own. Unfortunately,  I can’t remember where I read it first.  I love the idea that trees without leaves reveal FORM, the shape that things take.  I’ve lived most of my life in places (Idaho) with distinct seasons.  I’ve also had the experience of living with seasons in theory, but not in practice. (Southern California) I didn’t realize the power of season until I lived without season, warm and warmer or smog and less smog being the major distinctions rather than long hot days, and short, cold winter days, the breathtaking color of autumn, and the magic of green grass after months of brown.  Seasons are important, they remind us of the continuing change that is life.  Nothing stays the same.  Winter as a season of form is an interesting idea to me.  It’s a time that we see what’s beneath the fullness of trees, we see what’s under the scraggly abundance of bushes and beneath the lush ground cover.  Form is important, it adds the contour and shape to everything.  When form is revealed we know what we are working with.  Just as the rhythms of the year give us the gift of seeing form, I think it’s important in our lives, communities, and nation to look at the form, maybe that has been the gift of 2020, a chance to see our form? Visit Michael’s Blog; Profound Living for more on our Haiku Project If you like these questions, please consider SUBSCRIBING to The Art of Powering Down; Questions to Recharge Your Soul… Every week there is a question that will gently challenge you, encourage you, or help you live your life with more intention, grace, and purpose. (Sharing these reflections and questions with friends is the greatest compliment!)

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December Haiku: Sit, Take a Long View

When I think about this practice that Michael, Davin, and I have created over close to two years, I can’t believe I get to be a part!! Who knew seventeen syllables could foster such deeply profound connections and conversations. I loved our conversation this month (I say that, and mean it EVERY month!) and it’s so fun that we get to share these conversations with others. I know I leave these calls with ideas to ponder, books, and poems to add to my list. I hope in a world that is busy, complicated, and divided these short conversations can bring a small pause. Spur a new thought or even a new practice. The secret to Haiku writing is to write. The hardest part of the practice is picking up the pen. Make sure you visit Profound Living to see the full postcards and pictures that accompany each Haiku. If you like these questions, please consider SUBSCRIBING to The Art of Powering Down; Questions to Recharge Your Soul… Every week there is a question that will gently challenge you, encourage you, or help you live your life with more intention, grace, and purpose. (Sharing these reflections and questions with friends is the greatest compliment!)

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Reflective Reading: Wintering

I recently finished Wintering: The Power of Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. It’s a perfect book for this time of year and this year in particular. Below are a few passages that stood out to me (among many.) Reflective Reading is the practice of reading slowly, looking for the invitation and truth in each passage. Reflective Reading invites us to slow down and savor words and their meaning. Read each passage slowly, more than one time. Think about how the passage makes you feel. Notice what words or phrases stand out. Consider if there is an invitation for you to see something new. Most importantly, don’t rush. Savor the words. “If happiness is a skill, then sadness is, too. Perhaps through all those years at school, or perhaps through other terrors, we are taught to ignore sadness, to stuff it down into our satchels and pretend it isn’t there. As adults, we often have to learn to hear the clarity of its call. That is wintering. It is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.” ― Katherine May, Wintering:The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times “Nobody had ever said to me before, “You need to live a life that you can cope with, not the one that other people want. Start saying no. Just do one thing a day. No more than two social events in a week.” I owe my life to him.” ― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times “In The Wisdom of Insecurity, Watts makes a case that always convinces me, but which I always seem to forget: that life is, by its very nature, uncontrollable. That we should stop trying to finalise our comfort and security, and instead find a radical acceptance of the endless, unpredictable change that is the very essence of this life. Our suffering, he says, comes from the fight we put up against this fundamental truth.” ― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times May you winter well, and in the wintering may you find peace, joy, love, and abundance. If you like these questions, please consider SUBSCRIBING to The Art of Powering Down; Questions to Recharge Your Soul… Every week there is a question that will gently challenge you, encourage you, or help you live your life with more intention, grace, and purpose. (Sharing these reflections and questions with friends is the greatest compliment!)

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What Are You For?

What are you for?  This question has been bouncing around in my head.   I started thinking about this question because it is all too easy to define ourselves and others by what we are against. It is a question of energy. Is the energy that we put into the world a for (positive) energy or an against (negative) energy?   As I consider this in my own life, I’ve had to realize that too often my for is really a thinly disguised against. I am for this because I am actually more against that.   What are you for?  I like to think of being for as a wide, spacious, generous place to be. If we are fully in the for mindset there isn’t room for against. The people that I know that are truly FOR people are generous, kind, spacious; they aren’t easily offended when people don’t share the same for. They are so joyful in their for that there isn’t the energy to waste in an against. I think the most passionate for people have a compelling vision of the impact of their for, that they won’t be bothered investing in against because the vision of what can be is so powerful they would rather work for than against. What are you for? Are you more FOR it or are you against its opposite? In my advent reading this morning I read these words by Richard Rohr, “a person becomes a mirror image of anything if he opposes it in kind.” We’ve all seen this happen.  What are you for? What are you passionate about? I’ve been challenged this week to be bolder in standing with the things that I’m for. A silent for isn’t a very powerful for, and we have to question if that’s the most important for? A question that compliments what are you for is what one or two things are absolutely necessary? When we can answer what is necessary we have more information about the for of our lives.   What are you for? The world now more than ever needs people who are putting positive for energy into the world. The more that we can put together, the more that we can “forgive” and allow, the more we can include and enjoy, the more we tend to be living in the Spirit. The more we need to reject, oppose, deny, exclude, and eliminate, the more open we are to negative and destructive voices and to our own worst instincts. Richard Rohr in Preparing for Christmas If you like these questions, please consider SUBSCRIBING to The Art of Powering Down; Questions to Recharge Your Soul… Every week there is a question that will gently challenge you, encourage you, or help you live your life with more intention, grace, and purpose. (Sharing these reflections and questions with friends is the greatest compliment!)

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Reflective Reading: Gates of Hope

I found the following piece on hope when I was researching for the piece I wrote earlier this week. I felt that this piece was too meaty and good to try and quote in part. The invitation from Victoria Safford to “plant ourselves at the gate of hope,” is something that deserves a thoughtful pause. Read the following piece slowly, or listen to Parker Palmer read the piece here. As you read keep the following three questions in mind. Is there a line or phrase that stands out to you? What do these words make you feel? Is there an invitation for you as it relates to hope? “Hope”by Victoria Safford Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope — not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; nor the strident gates of self-righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges; nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of “Everything is gonna be all right,” but a very different, sometimes very lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it might be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only struggle, but joy in the struggle — and we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see. There is so much to discover in these words. Do you find yourself at the ‘prudent gates of Optimism, the ‘boring gates of Common Sense’ or ‘strident gates of self-righteousness?’ What does the line ‘…the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, the place of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be’ mean to you? After a little bit more research and googling I found the paragraph that proceeds the gates of hope. (I actually found the entire essay, it’s short and well worth reading, you can find it here.) We stand where we will stand, on little plots of ground, where we are maybe “called” to stand (though who knows what that means?) — in our congregations, classrooms, offices, factories, in fields of lettuces and apricots, in hospitals, in prisons (on both sides, at various times, of the gates), in streets, in community groups. And it is sacred ground if we would honor it, if we would bring to it a blessing of sacrifice and risk… Victoria Safford The Small Work in The Great Work (Read the Essay here) Where are you being asked to stand at the gates of hope? If you like these questions, please consider SUBSCRIBING to The Art of Powering Down; Questions to Recharge Your Soul… Every week there is a question that will gently challenge you, encourage you, or help you live your life with more intention, grace, and purpose. (Sharing these reflections and questions with friends is the greatest compliment!)

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The Questions of Hope

hope noun 1 (A): desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment “…hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy…” Richard Rohr Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr Hope seems especially important as we move towards the end of 2020, which has been a year where every-last-person may have had a strained relationship with hope. Hope has been a lifeline and strangely absent, all in a day (or really an hour somedays.) We’ve been asked to do things that just a year ago, had we been told, we wouldn’t have been able to imagine. (Lockdowns. Grocery Store shelves empty. Kids out of school since March. Online school. Wear masks. Shortage of toilet paper.)  Mark Nepo (a poet and writer that I really love) says the “hope is the energy of life.” Hope is the belief in what will come but isn’t yet. It’s important when thinking about hope to distinguish hope from optimism. Optimism is the expectation that things ‘have to get better.‘ Hope is the knowledge that things will get better. Optimism is good, it’s a castle in the air, it gives us a burst of energy and encouragement. Hope is a castle built on a deep, solid foundation of rocks. Optimism can easily shift and sway as circumstances change. Hope holds on even when it feels untenable to do so.  “It is a misnomer that hope is idealistic and saccharine. In actuality, hope is the energy of life filtering through the honesty of all its impediments. In our modern era, we endure a culture of hiddenness and denial, which has left most people frantically searching for the true energy of hope.”  (Mark Nepo The Energy of Hope) https://www.patheos.com/blogs/fieldno... I’ve been pondering the questions of hope. Hope is a concept that is easy to talk about (write about) and write pithy quotes around. But until we take hope from an idea or a nice word to our heart and explore our relationship with hope, I wonder if it’s as usable and accessible as it should be. To access the power of hope we need to make the effort to define hope and be honest about how it actually works in our own life.    Below are a few questions I’m asking myself when it comes to hope. I’m sure there are more and you’ll have your own unique questions. Where does hope live? (in your head or in your heart or somewhere in-between?) Where do you need the true energy of hope? What is the anchor of your hope?  What is your relationship between patience and hope?  Are you an optimist or a hope’timist? Are you demanding answers instead of waiting for the full picture?  “When we demand satisfaction of one another, when we demand any completion to history on our terms, when we demand that our anxiety or any dissatisfaction be taken away, saying as it were, “Why weren’t you this for me? Why didn’t life do that for me?”…We are refusing to hold out for the full picture…” Richard Rohr- Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr If you like these questions, please consider SUBSCRIBING to The Art of Powering Down; Questions to Recharge Your Soul… Every week there is a question that will gently challenge you, encourage you, or help you live your life with more intention, grace, and purpose. (Sharing these reflections and questions with friends is the greatest compliment!)

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Reflective Reading: Letters To A Young Poet

One of my favorite quotes about the power of questions is from Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. “I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet I run across quotes from Letters to a Young Poet quite often. I decided it was time to actually read the short book and see for myself what was in this classic volume. I loved it. It’s a very short book, and I’m pretty sure I underlined almost the entire book. It’s letters between Rilke and a young poet. (Hence, the title of the book!) The letters span from February 1903 to December 1908. They are about creativity, poetry, writing, living, relationships, questions, and messy human life. It’s a short book, my copy is 44 pages of the actual letters with another 30 pages or so of notes for context. The invitation is to choose one of the quotes and read it slowly, mine the depths, listen to what these words written in the early 1900s have to say to you as we near the end of 2020. Choose one of the quotes and read it slowly three or four times. Look for a word or phrase that stands out. How does the text make you feel? Is there an invitation for you in the passage? Maybe there is a new way to see sickness? Perhaps a question that you need to hold? “Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all, you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it since that is the way it gets better.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet “And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it. This very wish, if you use it calmly and prudently and like a tool, will help you spread out your solitude over a great distance. Most people have (with the help of conventions) turned their solutions toward what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything, in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet If you like these questions, please consider SUBSCRIBING to The Art of Powering Down; Questions to Recharge Your Soul… Every week there is a question that will gently challenge you, encourage you, or help you live your life with more intention, grace, and purpose. (Sharing these reflections and questions with friends is the greatest compliment!)

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