Insight | Bonnie Barnard - Part 4

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Love Is Still (And Always Is) The Answer

This morning I walked to the local farmer’s market for some raw bee pollen and along the way encountered hundreds of people dressed in purple shirts. I asked one of the t-shirt clad folks what they were up to. I learned they were about to embark on a walk for research, a cure, and those they love who have pancreatic cancer. I was immediately transported back fifteen years ago (or thereabouts) when I walked sixty miles for breast cancer. A smile crossed my face and my heart opened as I recalled the blisters, sunstroke, laughter, signs, and conversations with those who chose to walk because somehow Love inspired them. Life inspired them. Each walker in their own way felt compelled to say YES to a new and different possibility with each step. This morning I was transported into this Love Energy and it melted the cynicism I allowed to touch me this past week. Despite all of the craziness going on in our country right now; LOVE still wins....

Ash Wednesday Can Be Any Day

I wanted to write about Ash Wednesday yesterday, on its given day, and it didn’t happen. Although I thought about writing often, it just wouldn’t happen. Instead, I woke up with a message today … one day after its ritually assigned time. Which is PERFECT. It seems like a large portion of my life right now refuses to fit into the box or timeline I want to assign to it. How unfortunate it would have been if a blog on Ash Wednesday actually arrived on Ash Wednesday. Why is this? Because there is no time and space in God, The Universe, Our Hearts. Time and space are units of measurement that we humans brilliantly created in order to track and measure. Two very helpful practices for communicating with one another. Also, Ash Wednesday didn’t “feel different” to me than any other day, and it used to when I was steeped into the Lenten practice and I believed God was an external “thing.” Why doesn’t it? Because every day I ask...

Good-Bye Summer, Hello Fall

God, The Infinite, Potent, Almighty, is referred to as “The Presence” for a reason. The Present is ripe with aliveness and is where God lives. It is as though each moment you and I are living in a rich surprise custom made for each of us. I can relish in this or I can focus instead on the past (how it has been), opinion (how I think it ought to be), or the future (my wants). In doing this, I miss out on this rich, potent moment of what is. I can carry around unresolved energies waiting to be exalted and freed up from stories based upon my perception, based upon my stories. Eeeeek. I find that throughout the year, I stop and do some defragging of my own internal hard drive that I may be more available to experience the inlet and the outlet of God as me. How do I defrag? I look back at the most recent season, summer, and I do a mental review. Where did I see...

Ingredients for Mastery

This summer I returned to the Pacific Northwest to dodge the sun and attend a week of what I affectionately call “writer’s camp.” On both sides of this literary week, I stay with friends in their homes. One’s teenage daughter is an aspiring writer. Although I have yet to read her work, I imagine she is quite good as she loves stories. She spends her days watching television and reading immersed subconsciously in it construction. She saves her writing questions for when I come to town. My body now knows how to gauge questions telling the difference between questions of curiosity, questions of tactic and questions of weight. She began with curiosity: what do you do at writer’s camp? Moving then toward tactic — how do you pick a publisher and what does an agent do? And the question of weight was loaded with vulnerability: which genre has the least rejection? There it was hanging in the room. She wanted to write in part to hide. Our conversation wasn’t...

My New Favorite Word

“Words are bundles of energy wrapped in meaning passed to oneself or another for interpretation, response, and eventual digestion.” Rev. Bonnie I guess you can say I’m a “wordie,” which would be like a “foodie” but with words. I sit with words for hours, days, and sometimes years soaking in the original intention and its energy field; inviting the meaning of that word to refine me. Words are the building blocks of sentences which express thoughts unique to me; unique to another; and together a shared ‘we’ of understanding. My friend Quinn, a poet, collects words. She has a box she puts them in and pulls them out for inspiration. Some words have a magnificent sound about them. I honor the word pomegranate for its hearty, substantive sound which comes with a quirky deep red visual. I built a box like Quinn and pomegranate was my first word in. Some words feel good to my tongue and mouth as they pass from the insight outwardly; like “magnificence.” In addition to the melodic...

What is Your Theme for 2016?

Each year, around October, I start receiving clues about my theme for the upcoming year. I notice what is grabbing my intention and pulling at my desire strings. I start feeling a yearning to become more of myself in some area of my life. I am moved into curiosity. I invite into my dreams questions toward the forming of this theme. I am present to conversations, books, and shows where it seems like key words or phrases show up bold and underlined. I listen and watch for my body resonating with a concept. The feeling of this resonance is one of vitality mixed with giddiness. It can feel to me as though I’ve been thirsty and then I drank water. A kind of energetic satiation happens. And, bit-by-bit a theme begins to emerge. It begins as an idea and then starts to become full bodied; like a sponge in a capsule. With water added the capsule dissolves and I can have a more dimensional experience of the sponge. My theme for 2016 began to pop in November; I was asking...