Spirit | Bonnie Barnard - Part 4

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Learning What Your Heart Wants to Know

Author and curious learner Cassandra Overby set about interviewing individuals asking them about a pivotal moment in their lives which changed them. I was interviewed for the May 9th blog entry where I spoke of the power of silence in my life. If you are interested in reading the article, click here. This project got me thinking about the power of following my heart and honoring it by listening and then acting. How does my heart speak to me? In several ways. 1. When my heart is engaged and talking to me, I feel safe, whole, at one with everything and I often feel heat emanating from my physical heart. This state can be referred to as happiness, joy, bliss; all various degrees of the same thing. Interestingly enough, I can also feel my heart actively engaged when I am in the midst of feeling emotionally not so great and I take a loving stand for myself or another. In the first example, my heart is...

Walking, Races, and Postcards

It is Seafair milk carton boat racing Saturday at Greenlake in Seattle Washington as friend Matt and I dodge pirates, children, and temporary floating devices to make our way back to our cars. To the right is a lake filled with children racing with announcer Chip Hanauer, Seattle hydroplane 11 time gold cup winner, narrating the action. To our left is a row of booths. One booth stands out and Matt and I make our way toward it. We meet entrepreneur Robb Anthony who as a freshmen dreamed of receiving a mail box full of postcards. Thirty would be enough to take away his painful loneliness, he shared with us. Yearning for the thirty and knowing they weren’t coming he decided to give them instead of receive them. Armed with postcards, he began writing to other freshmen. Overwhelmed by volume, he enrolled other students in his vision to remind people of their value. This concept birthed the non-profit Postcards from Farr Away (PFFA). Approaching his table we see a pile...

A Twenty Year Friendship Crescendo

I fell in love with my friend, almost twenty years ago, at a task force meeting for our spiritual community. We each had a styrofoam cup of coffee with powdered creamer in one hand and a day old donut swaddled in a napkin, in the other. We were in a small Las Vegas church in an even smaller room filled with voted-in leaders from across the country. Our eyes met as if to agree this continental breakfast was lame for a volunteer group who took vacation time from work traveling far distances to make a contribution to this organization. Our eye language became an instant and lasting part of our relationship. On our first break, we briskly left the building walking to the nearest grocery to buy some fresh food. We bit into a fresh apple, drank from our sweating water bottles and giggled our bond into existence. I learned my new friend was thirty five years my senior, although she didn’t look it and her energy didn’t convey it. She...

My Favorite Scene in the Movie Lincoln

In Spielberg’s new movie; Lincoln in standing in a communication center consisting of two desks and small brass contraptions which transport Morse Code. There are two men, one at each desk, and it is a heightened moment within the Civil War. Lincoln is waiting for an update to be transmitted and is partially talking his thought process aloud while engaging with the communicators. Lincoln asks if either young man studied engineering. One responds, “yes.” Lincoln then asks him what he thinks about one of Euclid’s Axioms. The young man says he doesn’t remember his book studies as he basically forgot his book learning once he left school. Lincoln shares that he, himself, didn’t have much formal education, but he allowed his studies to inform and change him. Since he read Euclid’s axiom “Things that are equal to one another are equal to each other” he contemplated this idea in the context of race. Like equalling like, Euclid said, is self-evident. This insight, provides clarity regarding an action Lincoln was to...

Broken Heartedness

“We are pain and what cures pain, both.” Rumi “What is real can never be fully taken away; its essence always remains.” Poet David Whyte Many years ago, my heart broke wide open and since then I have not been the same. It splintered after an operation and my body wasn’t recovering well. My heart broke for the vulnerability and fragility of my physical being. At the same time, my father died. The grief oozed through my body and I saw everything through the temporal lens of death. Listening to a song I would say to myself “this could be the last time I hear this song,” then I’d cry for its beauty. Watching sunrises and sunsets choked me up more. I couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful and I knew there would be a time when my eyes would behold its last. At the same time, a major relationship ended. I chose to leave my home town and relocate to a city far away from family and friends and...

Partnering Up for Prayer, Part I

I am a multi-dimensional being with most of me existing in the invisible realm. What about me can’t be seen? My thoughts. Yes, the evidence of what I believe shows up through my actions, I live them outwardly, yet the actual thought behind the action cannot be seen. An example of this may be I may think I am funny (thought) and laugh with myself (action following thought). My emotions. Emotions are most often a result of my thought interpretation. In changing how I see something, I change the emotion which arises from it, thus changing my behavior. With trauma victims, the fractured emotional field often informs the thought. It is backward. Either way, they date each other and are sleeping together in the invisible. I believe you didn’t clean up your room to get even with me (thought and interpretation) and I become mad (emotion). My feelings. My feelings include intuitive knowings, inklings, body sensations, body impressions, silent transmission of energy between myself and another. These too cannot...