Category: faith

dreams, faith, fate, nature, opportunity

Leap: My Conversation Along the Path with the Moon

Christa Avampato
Photo by Neil Leighton

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” ~ Mary Oliver via DailyGood

There is a world beyond what we can see, hear, and touch.

Every once in a while I get a glimpse of this world, usually in the deep recesses of the night, and it snaps me awake, not in a shake-me-out-of-bed sort of way, but in a very cosmic everything-is-going-to-be-okay sort of way. It happened last Tuesday in the wee hours of the morning. On Monday night I had a session with Brian that left my mind churning about exciting new possibilities as I commit to taking this leap in my career.

I thought I was dreaming as I heard a very gentle calling from an old woman to the effect of, “If you can put your trust in me, I promise you it will be okay. You will be okay.” My eyes gently opened upon hearing this and I found that the light of the moon shone very brightly through my window. I’d never seen it in that position outside my window, and it had never shown through that brightly. It felt like a spotlight on me. It looked full. I cocked my head to one side (similar to the stance Phineas takes when he hears an unexpected sound on our walks), realizing very clearly that the voice was coming from the moon. And it didn’t seem the least bit odd.

I climbed out of bed, walked over to the window, pulled back the curtain, and saw that without the curtain the moon was only half full. I put the curtain back in place and again it appeared full. I have no idea why and I didn’t question it in my sleepy state.

I crawled back into bed and gazed at the moon. “So all I have to do is trust? Trust that leaping is the right thing to do?” I asked. And she glowed back a nod and a gentle “yes.” That was it. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

A few hours later, I woke to my alarm, bundled up, and then bundled up Phin. He led the way to Riverside Park without hesitation, and I gladly took his lead as I turned over in my mind my encounter with the moon. Did that really happen, or was I dreaming? In the rising daylight, I reasoned that of course I had been dreaming.

And then Phineas stopped. Just stopped right by a tree and sat down, facing west. I stood in place next to him and looked out over the chilly Hudson to see a low orange moon, full now (for real), setting on the western horizon as the sun was making its way up in the East. She didn’t say anything this time. She just sat there and looked at me as Phineas and I looked back, all resolute in the fact that yes, of course it would all be okay. It has to be because we’re on the path we’re meant for, and when our actions fall in line with our destiny the world oddly, beautifully,  inexplicably cooperates.

Doors open by the light of the moon, and all we need to do is walk through them.

change, choices, commitment, creativity, faith

Beginning: Taking a Chance Leads to More Chances

Christa Avampato
From missrosemariewoods.buzznet.com

“Chances multiply if you grab them.” ~ Yogi tea bag

We too often think that this is our one big chance to try something new, to do something we’ve always dreamed of. We fear that if we don’t take this leap now, the opportunity will pass us by and if we leap and fail, then we’ll head back to our existence prior to the leap with the comfort that at least we tried. No one really talks about the second chance, the one that happens precisely because we took that first chance.

Our existence in this moment, exactly as it is, is one-of-a-kind. We will never pass this way again. Robert Frost so beautifully described this sentiment of choices and the magic that they create in his poem The Road Not Taken: “Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” Once we make a leap, it begets another leap. The chances we take lead to other chances, not back to the place we started.

Perhaps this is the reason why leaping is so frightening in the first place. If we knew we could always just go back to our jumping off point, then we’d leap all the time without even considering the consequences. There would be no risk. And probably no fun, either.

Consider a time you made a real leap of faith that didn’t work out as you planned. When I went to business school, I intended to return to the nonprofit world as a fundraiser. It didn’t really happen as I planned. The chances that appeared after I took that chance to go to school multiplied exponentially, expanding my view of the world and my place in it. In the nearly 5 years since I graduated, I realized that I hadn’t gone to school to return an established nonprofit. I went to school to figure out how to create my own nonprofit. While a student, I didn’t know that but somehow the Universe had a far greater intelligence on that front than I did. Way got on to way, as it were, despite my efforts to steer my path otherwise.

It’s what Goethe meant when he talked about the magic in commitment. Part of that magic comes from taking chances, knowing that more chances lie ahead that will be able to trace a direct line back to that first chance we had the courage to take. I don’t believe that on every side of a chance there will be a net to catch us, but I do believe that opportunity taken leads to more opportunities available. And that is as good a reason as any to leap.

art, dreams, faith, free, work

Beginning: Let Yourself Get Carried Away

Christa Avampato
Illusion of Control by Brian Andreas

“If you hold on to the handle, she said, it’s easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it’s more fun if you just let the wind carry you. “ ~ Brian Andreas

The image to the right the latest piece of art gracing the walls of my tiny New York apartment. Brian Andreas is one of my favorite artists so I was thrilled to find this print of his at the new Housing Works store in my neighborhood just after writing a post about “Letting Go to Be Free”. It was like a universal affirmation telling me, “Hey kid, you’re on the right track. Keep going and have fun in the process.” Thank you, Universe. Duly noted.

I have often written about the illusion of control that came crashing down on us for a solid 18 months starting in 2008. The economy had been chugging along at a healthy clip for a number of years with only a few naysayers wondering just where on Earth all this growth was coming from. We wrote them off as fast as possible, covering our ears, smiling widely, and spending to our heart’s content. And we learned that the heart is never content. It always wants more so we leveraged ourselves to the hilt, the government included, and fooled ourselves into thinking that we were safe. The mind is a slippery place; we can convince ourselves of anything if we try hard enough.

Safety lies not in your company or your professional network. Both are as slippery as the mind. Like the girl in Brian’s painting above, you can hold onto the handle to maintain the illusion of control – after all, that’s what handles are for, right?

Or you could trust the wind, your own intuition. You can tune in to the circumstances around you in a very honest way, understand exactly the resources that you have at-hand (literally), and find the best way to get the two to mesh. The wind will carry you, like it or not. Try to fight those winds, and you’re likely to struggle to no avail. Recognize their power and give yourself a chance to steer them in a direction that works for best for you. Less struggle, more fun, more learning.

From one control freak to another, let’s hold hands and see where the ride takes us.

dreams, faith, free, work

Beginning: Letting Go to Be Free

Christa Avampato

by Thomas Spiessens
“A truth: the more you squeeze, the less you have.” ~ fortune cookie

I had dinner with my friend, Amy, on Saturday night and in my fortune cookie I received this message. Amy and I had just been talking about her decision to not renew her work contract after it expires in January. She’s wanted to pursue a career in the humanitarian field for a number of years and has been saving toward this goal. Now that she’s saved the necessary amount and has a back-up plan in place, she’s giving her dream a whirl.

Amy’s decision requires a lot of faith and flexibility. She needs to be open to a lot of possibilities and outcomes. As with every dream, there is some personal sacrifice that Amy will have to make – the hours will be long and the competition for the roles she most wants is fierce. However, Amy has so much heart and has been preparing for this moment for so long that I have every confidence that she is heading off in a beautiful and meaningful new direction.

To make this choice, Amy had to let go of a bit of her job security and take a road that she will have to build herself. Her greatest insight came when she realized she was holding tight to a job that is not her life’s work. The more we release, the more freedom me gain. As she sees time ticking by she feels an urgency, a call to action to at least give her dream a shot. The worst that could happen is that it won’t work out and she’ll find a new dream, fulfilled with the knowledge that she gave it her very best try. Her example is such a good lesson for me, and for all of us: an open hand can hold more than a clenched fist.

choices, clarity, dreams, faith

Beginning: Your Mission Possible

Christa Avampato

“What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.” ~Theodore Roethke

A few days ago, the brilliant Tom Friedman wrote his weekly New York Times opinion piece on “The Start-up of You“. It’s a quick read, insightful, and hopeful. The last few lines are particularly poignant for me: You have to strengthen the muscles of resilience. “You may have seen the news that [the] online radio service Pandora went public the other week,” Hoffman said. “What’s lesser known is that in the early days [the founder] pitched his idea more than 300 times to V.C.’s with no luck.” In other words, you’ve got to have confidence in your own center.

This concept of confidence in our center is particularly powerful for me lately as I work on providing yoga and meditation to people who are recovering from trauma. One of the main challenges in transcending trauma is that trauma robs us of our center. In trauma, we have trouble getting quiet and going inside to tap our deepest wisdom. The trauma itself becomes our center; the focal point around which our other decisions are made.

Once we have a healthy center, of our own creation and internally guided, our confidence grows. And it’s not blind confidence or an overly powerful ego – it’s the quiet confidence that radiates from us. It’s charisma and authenticity.

That’s what Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, has. I heard him speak at Darden while I was a student there, and his vision and purpose are so clear. Despite the naysayers and those who thought the idea of Pandora would just never work, he could keep going and keep pitching his clear, simple message about the service. It was his center.

That’s how Compass Yoga was born and why its mission continues to drive me. When everything else falls away, I have my experience and my yoga. Those two things travel with me everywhere, and together they planted the seed that became Compass Yoga’s mission to provide wellness programs to those with a specific health concern. That is my center, what I know to be possible even if others see it as otherwise.

So now this begs the question, what is your center? What sustains you when everything and everyone else falls away, and how can you share that for the benefit of the world around you?

choices, decision-making, faith, family

Beginning: Your Yesterdays Will Rise Again; Act Accordingly

Christa Avampato

“If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.” ~ Pearl Buck

Searching yesterday is valuable, difficult work. I take it on every day because I believe so fully in the process of continuous improvement. I know and accept that I am not perfect, that I will never be perfect, and that there is always a way to do something better. This strong belief is helping me to make peace with yesterday and to lay down the heavy backpack of perfectionism. Perfection is a losing battle, and I hate losing even more than I hate imperfection.

Even with this strong belief in continuous improvement, some yesterdays have a way of gnawing at me even in my best moments. Not all yesterdays are created equal. I try to be thorough, thoughtful, and well-informed. I am the decision tree queen. I’d be willing to test my pro / con list speed and dexterity against anyone. I’ve been at this game of choice and decision-making for a very long time and for me, it’s an art.

My last yesterday with my father
So it’s sometimes especially difficult when I wish I had handled a situation from yesterday in a better way. I wish I had gone to the hospital and said good-bye to my father when I had the chance. I wish I could have swallowed my pride and my desire to be “right” – it might have saved me a lot of heartache in the aftermath. It’s not that I didn’t say good-bye to my father that bothers me so much; it’s that I made the free-willed choice to not say good-bye. I had good reasons for making that choice, though I wish I could have just laid them aside, whether they were right or wrong, and just been there with my mother to bear witness at the passing of a life that gave me life. It is my greatest and deepest regret, and with the finality of death it is something that I will never be able to do better. I can’t go back and say good-bye to my father in a better way, or for that matter, at all.

Keeping and living the lesson
The night my father died, I lost in a big way. His Holiness the Dalai Lama once said, “When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.” And in every day since my father passed I have tried to retain a very big yesterday lesson: when you walk away understand that you may not be able to retrace your steps.

Sometimes walking away is the best answer. Sometimes the only way you can really help someone heal is to remove yourself from the situation. Be very conscious of the downstream effects – for you and for that person – and understand that your decision in that moment has the ability to entirely alter your course going forward.

You will relive all of your yesterdays every day; act accordingly.

change, dreams, faith

Step 361: The Caterpillar’s Promise

Christa Avampato

“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” ~ Buckminster Fuller

I read this quote over the Christmas holiday as I was learning more about Eric Carle’s work. He wrote the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar (for his sister, Christa, I might add), as well as the Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See Series. My niece loves those books and I bought her a game based on the stories. The butterfly gets a lot of credit in our society as a powerful metaphor, without much mind being paid to the humble caterpillar who believed he could be more.

Think of a caterpillar, a small, wormy looking animal, not particularly attractive or inspiring. He doesn’t don any beautiful colors, he can’t fly, and no one is particularly glad to find him out there in the world. Butterflies, however, are magical. We covet their appearance, and think imagine that a beautiful thing like a butterfly came from a tiny caterpillar. Without understanding the science behind the transformation, would anyone really believe that something that looks like a caterpillar could become a butterfly? No one except the caterpillar.

Think of all the people you know who have wild, far-out-there ideas. People who keep reaching and believing that they can change the world, or at least their small corner of it. People who never say never, who don’t give up, who roll with every punch and every speed bump that pops up in their path. Big thinkers who also get out in the world and do, even if it’s against all odds.

They may just be the caterpillars among us. We would do well to believe in them, and in our own ability to transform if we just believe that we can.

How would you like your life to transform as we start the new year?

Christmas, faith, religion

Step 360: My Christmas Story

Christa Avampato

My faith has morphed over the years. I was raised Catholic, thought for a bit about being a Unitarian and a Buddhist, and then through yoga thought that Hinduism may be a possibility. Finally, I happily settled on being interested in religion and calling myself spiritual without affiliation.

So it came as quite a surprise that Christmas Eve found me in a Methodist Church pondering my faith again. I went with my family to the First United Methodist Church of Orlando. I really went because I wanted to support my sister; she’s on staff there and runs all of the communications for the Church. She and my brother-in-law were married in that church and both of my nieces were baptized there. Plus, I love Christmas carols, of which there are many at the family service.

And then a very odd thing happened. The Head Pastor gave a sermon about people unlikely to call themselves religious. He talked about Joseph and his very serious consideration of leaving behind his family and his faith. After further contemplation, he felt something greater than himself asking him to stay, to persevere, to not give up. He talked about people who have considered giving up on their faith, people who doubt and question, people who feel like they don’t really belong to any affiliation. The remarkable thing is that he didn’t talk down to those people; he didn’t criticize them. Quite the opposite – he invited them in. In a moment of silence he asked us to bow our heads, close our eyes, and raise our hands if anyone felt like they might belong to one of those groups, and would like the congregation to pray for them.

I found that the idea of staying, just sticking around to see how it goes, made my eyes water, and I raised my hand. I did need the prayers he so generously offered. On Christmas Eve I felt a little lost, a little out-of-place, but still moved to further explore my faith, and even considering that spiritual without affiliation may not be enough for me anymore. And even though I felt lost, I also felt that I was in exactly the right place, as if that Pastor, and maybe even the Universe, knew what I needed far better than I did.

We closed the service by lighting candles and walking together out of the church singing Silent Night. I was surprised how warm the light of my candle felt, alarmingly warm. I felt a little message in that flame. If I stayed, maybe some answers would show up, answers that in all of my exploring I have not yet been able to find. Rather than dashing here, there, and everywhere, maybe I just needed to be still, and wait, and listen.

That’s my Christmas story this year. How did it go for you?

The image above makes me remember how much can be found through faith. Find it here.

faith, nature, religion, science, season

Step 355: Faith and the Total Lunar Eclipse

Christa Avampato

This morning there was a total lunar eclipse coinciding with the Winter Solstice – it ended about an hour ago. The next time that will happen will be in 2096. My brother-in-law, Phineas, and I went out to see the beginning of it. I won’t be around to see the next one. My brother-in-law has a shot at the next viewing. We both figured it was worth the sacrifice of sleep to bear witness.

Astronomers must be the happiest people on Earth, the ones most at peace because any everyday annoyance actually doesn’t matter. 100 years in the life of the universe isn’t even equivalent to the blink of an eye. It’s practically insignificant. Every disappointment, sadness, loss, betrayal. None of it is really worth being that upset over when we consider that the night sky that we’re looking at actually happened a minimum of 100 years ago – the stars are that far away from us. It’s mind-blowing. What we were looking at last night, for the most part, doesn’t even exist anymore. When we gaze up at the starts we are staring centuries back into the past. It’s mind-blowing.

And it makes me think that to be in the presence of something so awesome there must be more out there. It just couldn’t all be placed this way by luck. Beauty of that magnitude, concepts that stretch out minds and move our hearts so much, can’t be generated solely by chance. I looked up at the Earth’s shadow crossing the moon so perfectly, feeling our insignificance and greatness all at once. And all I could think was that there must be some reason, and that we must have faith.

The image above depicts the beginning of a total lunar eclipse and can be found here.

dogs, faith, loss, love, pets

Step 299: Letting Go Helps Us Find the Path We’re Meant For

Christa Avampato

“On my yoga mat, I ask myself what I can let go of & what I can let in to be more connected to the essence of yoga.” ~ Planet Yoga via Twitter

Dogs are resilient. They leave the past where it should be – in the past. They take the learnings they need from their experience and move forward. I’m not sure how they figured that out and left us to the task of reliving our pasts over and over again. I do know that we have a lot to learn from our canine pals.

When I read Planet Yoga’s tweet on letting go, I was reminded of how much we have to gain from release. We think of letting go as just loss, but there’s a flip side to it, too. When we release and empty out, we make room for new chances for happiness and fulfillment. We give ourselves permission to move onward and upward.

Hanging on to the past doesn’t serve us. I think about what Phineas’s life would now be like if he couldn’t let go of the heartbreak he must have felt when his first family mistreated him. What if instead of being his loving, friendly self, he had let the mistreatment make him bitter and cold? He may have never found his way to me, and might never have been able to enjoy the truly charmed life he lives now. What’s more, he ran away from his abusive home without knowing if things would be better. I think he just knew that his conditions were bad, unacceptable even, and somewhere in his tiny dachshund heart he knew that there had to be a better life waiting for him someplace else. He went it alone, and in a way based on nothing but faith.

On Sunday morning, the sun was shining and Phin and I were making our way up West End Avenue under the brightly colored leaves that line the street. I could smell hot apple cider from the street fair underway and there was a saxophone player entertaining us with a song that could have set up the opening credits to a feel-good movie. We passed by the beautiful brownstones of the Upper West Side, and in that instant life felt absolutely perfect. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of gratitude at the simplicity and happiness of that moment, and carried it with me for the rest of the day.

In order to have that moment with Phin, I needed to let go of the pain I felt when Sebastian passed away a year ago and Phin needed to let go of the family that had abandoned him. We both had to learn how to love again. I may have rescued Phin from the Humane Society, but he rescued me right back. Right then, I made a vow to let go of sadness more often in favor of letting in more light.

The photo above shows Phin and I at the 8th Annual My Dog Loves Central Park Country Fair. It was taken by photographer James Riordan.