One of my favourite movies — it’s nerdy, it’s cute, it’s hilarious and a fundamentalist Christian gets exposed to the vastness of the universe and learns to swear.
Continue readingAuthor: Yvonne Aburrow
Reflections
Changing Paths challenge day 30 — reflections.
The most amazing autobiography I have ever read was Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Gustav Jung.
It discusses how he arrived at his psychoanalytical theory — but the bits I found most fascinating were about his childhood and his occult experiences.
Continue readingMemories
Changing Paths challenge day 29—memories.
One of my earliest memories is looking up at the constellation of Orion. I’ve always loved it.
This amazing photo of Orion is from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. In the early days of the internet I used to visit this site every day. I should get back into the habit!
The significance of this memory is that looking up at the stars makes you realize the sheer size of the universe, and how magnificent it is in its own right — and much larger than most fundamentalists could possibly imagine. This reminds me of the awesome quote from Douglas Adams: “You may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s but that’s just peanuts to space.”
Changing Paths is published by 1000Volt Press and is available from all the usual online stores. Ask your local bookseller or library to stock it!
The goal of the book is to help you decide your own path by guiding you through the perils and pitfalls of the terrain, and asking questions to help you deepen your understanding of the reasons for your desire to change paths.
At the crossroads
Changing Paths challenge day 28 — the crossroads
“Only one heart had to find its true position and travel on from there and all the rest would follow, for no matter how isolated the one felt itself to be, in the deeps of all life all were united and no one could move accurately without all ultimately moving with it…”
—Laurens van der Post, A Far-Off Place, p 304
“The crossroads is a liminal place, an in-between place. It is often seen as uncanny, the place where criminals and suicides were buried, a place that might sweep you off your feet and carry you to some unknown destination, a place where you went to sell your soul to the Devil in exchange for some great talent. The crossroads is a profoundly uncomfortable place to be. So is sitting on the fence between two positions. But the ambiguity of the crossroads gives you freedom. You have at least four paths to choose from, plus the option of staying where you are.”
— Changing Paths, chapter 5: At the crossroads
Changing Paths is published by 1000Volt Press and is available from all the usual online stores. Ask your local bookseller or library to stock it!
The goal of the book is to help you decide your own path by guiding you through the perils and pitfalls of the terrain, and asking questions to help you deepen your understanding of the reasons for your desire to change paths.
Change
Changing Paths challenge day 27: change
My favourite times of year are the transitional seasons of spring and autumn, when everything is changing rapidly. In spring there are new blossoms and new leaves emerging, and the days lengthen rapidly. In autumn, the leaves turn red and yellow and orange and are blown away in the wind. The smell of bonfires is in the air, symbolising the transformation of decay into the bright energy of fire.
Continue readingWobbling
Changing Paths challenge day 26 — wobbling
Spiritual wobbles can happen when your spiritual path becomes out of synch with your religious community. They can be dry spells, when it feels as if the source of your spiritual life has dried up, or the wobble can propel you out of your old path and into a new one. It depends how severe the wobble is.
Continue readingWandering
Changing Paths challenge day 25 — wandering
Wandering, like wavering and wondering, is a good thing. There is a whole genre of songs in German called Wanderliede, about hiking.
And as JRR Tolkien wisely remarked, not all those who wander are lost.
Continue readingWonder
Changing Paths challenge day 24 — wondering.
There’s wondering in the sense of asking questions about the nature of things, and then there’s wonder in the sense of amazement.
Continue readingEmotional vocabulary
A really helpful resource for processing and naming the emotions you feel in response to your life experiences.
Longing, Sehnsucht
Changing Paths challenge day 23 — longing.
There are various words in other languages that can be approximately translated as longing or yearning. Sehnsucht (German), a longing for a person or a place. Saudade (Portuguese), melancholic longing for a person or a place. Hiraeth (Welsh), a longing for home, possibly unattainable since we cannot revisit the past. Tizita (Amharic-Ethiopian), a longing or yearning, which has given its name to a style of music. Romanian has the word dor, which comes from the Latin word dolus which means “pain” and is related to the Romanian word durere (which means “pain”).
Continue reading
Changing Paths 