Toiling, Encouragements, and Thank Yous: On Seasons Missing Rose-Colored Lenses

"Underneath all we are taught, there is a voice that calls to us beyond what is reasonable, and in listening to that flicker of spirit, we often find deep healing."
- Mark Nepo

Ever feel like the color gets flushed out of your life?

Mine has been feeling
that way for about
the last semester.

---

The deathly feelings
of my fall
and winter have
hit me pretty hard
these seasons, lovies.

---

Even my attempts to go down to southern Indiana for my birthday in November,  was stark of the seasonal vibrancy I was hoping to encounter.

So has been my life for the passing few months:
to seek the vibrancy while colorblind.
Its so unlike me to feel so pessimistic.

It had been a tough semester, friends.
As you can see, I haven't even gotten much the chance to write to you, in sometime. Academically speaking, I felt proud I was fairly on-top of my pursuits (the first half of the semester), but right-brained-typical-self living in the uncharted analytically-oriented side of my mind for a change, began to feel foreign, bland, and rote  real quick.
Papers!
Papers!
Reading!
Reading!
Presentation!
Presentation!
Read!
Read More!
Exam!
Exam!
Deadline!
Deadline!
Hurry!
Hurry!
I'm taking in information, spitting it back out, and constantly whirling in the self-induced-chaos that this was not the slow-paced intentional lifestyle I've signed up for -- and how ironic it is that to be pursuing a counseling profession can be so crazy-making!? My body, heart, and mind ache in not wanting to experience the world through the calculated part of my brain, and to not live this mechanized way of production. I even feel even more insane that the last handful of times I've written have primarily been about this graduate school madness... oh, to find myself in such cycles again...

I feel many of us in my generation finds ourselves in such a vocational dizzying-spell.  We have such big hearts to bring so much value into this world: to take care of her, and each other --in such creative ways!-- and we are the trailblazers for re-engineering the new blueprint for authentic living: building bridges to self and our life's work. Yet some, like myself, still feel like a herd of occupational cattle, too nervous to step out of the more socially acceptable throng of livelihood pursuits.

I want to love and listen to people through their
mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical toiling.
This could manifest in a million different forms,
but going to graduate school to be a counselor seems
the standard option,
so I took my yellow tag number. 

This manner of viewing the educational system is not a generalized paradigm I believe everyone ought to share. I apologize for any offense taken by those who hold the way of life and learning in such regard. Knowledge is the life-blood for great personal and social change, in most circumstances. Accountability, which the educational system does well to uphold within one's life work, is key  to added stability of persons and professions, in most circumstances.

I am simply curious if the knowledge and accountability through my
masters program is my  path to gain the knowledge and accountability
best suited for me.

From the same passage taken from my Mark Nepo quote above, he continues to speak of an ill man who dropped out of seminary to become a dancer.
"It is compelling for us to realize that studying God did not heal him.
Embodying God did."

I am the only one that can decide,
and act on,
what embodying God is for me.

Ironically (due to my situation at hand, and coincidentally with all this inner-voice talk) a large part of my "Read! Reading!" this semester spoke considerably upon trusting oneself.  Theologian and psychologist, Eugene Drewermann, believes that foundations of healing violence and mental illness within our world stem from honoring our unique inner voice;

trusting the God expression of our own
person-hood and to live this out.

Am I creating violence in my portion of the world, 
within myself,
to others,
by not trusting the person I feel I am?
Or are these the typical growing pains of the growing process?

A friend of mine and I were talking briefly the other day, about the necessity of the emotional seasons for a healthy soul. Our being needs to have it's own form of winters as much as its
autumns,
summers,
and springs.
Each time span with its characteristics of death,
fertility,
growth,
and back again.

This one goes out to all of us who are in our colder seasons emotionally,
with our gray-scale lenses
who aren't giving up trying it all,
until we find what brings back our vibrancy
(even when we feel like not trying it all sometimes).

And to the ones in their attitudes and livelihoods of warmth:
the Trailblazers
who have figured out how to work inside
and/or outside of the system,
to follow their hearts and
their callings in their own authentic ways.

Those who continue to remind
us all,
that the hues will eventually glow
again.

Those who show us the days of longer light are coming.

        Those who have gone-- and will share in again -- their bleak soul's winter, too.

May we be one anther's summers,
winters,
autumns,
and springs,
when we cannot uphold their qualities on our own.

And may we trust in the seasons and colors which reside in our soul,
and  that inner God-voice which speaks to us all-the-during.

xo