Inner Wisdom with Renita Weems: March 2009 Archives

Once or twice a month I am bolted awake in the middle of the night by a dream of a prowler standing outside wherever I'm sleeping that night (home, hotel, a friend's guestroom). The prowler is fumbling with the locks on the door to my room. Suddenly he's inside... I hear his footsteps... he's turning the corner... he's standing above me... I can see his outline...I feel him reaching for me...I bolt up in bed. I'm too frightened to remain unconscious; I need to find out whether the prowler is a rapist, a burglar or even a friend who's come to tell me something.

I've discovered a pattern to my "predator" dreams. They usually pop up in my unconscious world when there's something I don't want to face in my conscious world. Something I'm avoiding. Something I would rather run away from. The predator comes to shake me to my senses, leaving me sitting upright in my bed asking, "My Lord, what was that all about?" That's enough to make me rummage through my mind to discover what's inside that wants to move from periphery to the center of my consciousness. Mind you, I didn't say that I am willing to deal with whatever it is. I just said that the startled feeling the dream leaves me with prompts me that it's time to look at it.

Perhaps you have a recurring dream that visits you from time to time. It may be a scary dream, or it may be hilarious in the way it patches together bits and pieces of your life that, on the surface, have nothing to do with one another but on second thought have everything to do with one another. One thing is for sure: Dreams bring us messages from our unconscious. They come to tell us about the places within us that are emotionally dissatisfied or satisfied.

Explore your recurring dreams right now by journaling about them and listening for what they might be telling you.

--Renita Weems

When the world feels as if it's swirling out of control with family and office drama, schedule conflicts, and missed deadlines, the sanest thing to do sometimes is to turn your attention to creating little sanctuaries of calm and inspiration for yourself. Whether it's a room in a house, a corner of an office, or a wall in a carrel, it's important to create a space for yourself that invites you to get calm and to reflect upon those things that matter most. Sanctuary making begins by asking yourself, "What kind of spirit or mood do I want to encounter when I come into this space, this room, this little corner?" Then set out to create just such a spirit for the space with colors, texture, scents, pictures, mementoes, music, and, of course, prayer.

Steal a moment to yourself and hunker down in your personal space with a cup of latte, with your trusted pet at your feet, a favorite CD, a comfy ottoman, a favorite book or journal, and relax. Personalize your space by making it a sanctuary of escape for those times when you're under siege can be the next best (and cheapest) way to get away from it all.

Journal about some favorite spaces and places where you felt rejuvenated, inspired and relaxed upon visiting. What was it about being there that arrested you and made it easy to relax and hear yourself think?

--Renita Weems

Is it possible to miss opportunities that come our way? Of course it is. But it's also possible that the reason we miss them is because we're not ready within. Some opportunities come around once in a lifetime, but God repeatedly gives us the chance to start over, begin anew, go the next level. God is not like us. God gives us repeated chances to get it right. "Behold I stand at the door and knock," says the Holy One. Aren't you glad that God knocks repeatedly?

Think about the timing when certain things fell apart or when others things came together in your life. Had you been in your mid-20's instead of being in your late 30's when you discovered that your last boyfriend couldn't find it in himself to make a commitment to you, you may have lingered in the relationship longer, hoping, wishing, thinking something was wrong with you, trying to make him feel something he didn't feel. But you were older, you knew better, and you knew you deserved better.

A few years back you may have been too frightened to step out and start your own business, but after 20 years of making lots of money for someone else you know you have what it takes to make money under your own logo. A decade ago you would not have picked up a book on spiritual readiness. But today you can't read enough about reinventing yourself.

It must be God.

Recall some times in your past when timing made all the difference in the world to the fortuitous way things turned out in your life.

--Renita Weems

We throw around the term "my best friend" as a way to describe the friend who has come to mean the most to us and with whom we have bonded on the deepest level. We long for deep friendships.

But the truth is that close friendships are hard to nurture and even harder to keep. Most of us know more about losing friends than we know about finding new friendships. We know even less in our transient society about how to sustain good friendships. Sometimes friendships end because we demanded too much. No one friend can (or has to) be everything to you. It's alright to have different "best" friends for the many different parts of yourself and for the many different interests that you have. Go ahead and give yourself permission to explore new friendships. It's even alright to dial up an old friend with whom you've lost touch over the years.

Reflect on how friendship has become more or less important in your life in recent years. If you could write a letter to an old friend, someone whose friendship you lost to a blunder or to misunderstanding, or to distance and time, what would you say to that friend now? What about this friend do you still miss? What makes the memory of your friendship with that person still come to mind after all these years?

--Renita Weems

You know you've found your life's calling when what others find infuriating and odious about a task is precisely what you find fascinating and compelling. When the work's complexities fire your imagination and its contradictions keep you awake at night pondering its solution, then you know you are on the scent of your calling and vocation. What's more, somehow in the doing of it you sense something sacred and holy working itself out in you and in your work. It's you, but also it's not you. You stand to preach, you sit down to rewrite, you sit at the wheel before a lump of clay, and you discover that you are being changed (and healed) as much as others are being changed (and healed) by the work that you do.

Parker Palmer reminds us that vocation does not come from a voice outside calling you to be something or someone you are not. Rather vocation comes from a voice within calling you to be the person you were born to be. Vocation is not about doing what you're supposed to be doing. It's about becoming the person God created you to be.

Who are you? What are your passions, your talents, your values and your commitments. What do you enjoy doing, so much that you lose all sense of time when doing it and feel "renewed" somewhat in doing it, that you would do it for free if you could?

--Renita Weems

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