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Barefoot on Holy Ground
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Trust the Wind Under Your Wings

Faith will bring to you all the knowledge and skills you need to ascend the mountain. Once you are there, it shows you the view. And then it says, “Jump.”

We may spend years—or lifetimes—on top of the moun-tain, observing, speculating, enjoying . . . and hesitating. Ego control is tenacious. Yet at some point the inner prompting says: “Do you love the truth enough to jump off this mountain and have faith in the unknown?”

If you do, the wind will hold you. It will carry you on great unseen currents into unimagined landscapes in the Spirit. It will connect you to a larger plan in ways your ego could not create even under the best conditions. The wind sweeps across continents and oceans, through times and cultures, depositing seeds wherever the soil is ready. Trusting the unseen wind, the breath of God, we become a seed, or as the twelfth-century abbess and mystic Hildegard of Bingen put it, we become “a feather on the breath of God.”

Faith draws from universal supply an endless stream of people, energy, and talents to fulfill intention. When we live by personal manipulation, “who you know” is one of the ground rules in our coping manual. But living by faith is a lot about who and what you don’t yet know. As all souls are connected at the spiritual level, that’s where the intention of evolution is laid out and work assignments are given. We are participants in an unfolding Plan on earth. We get glimpses of it, but the larger blueprint is as yet beyond our understanding. Evolu-tion—personal, spiritual, physical—is the working energy of that unfolding plan.

Ultimately we all work for the same boss, the Source of all resources. Whatever we need—catalysts, contacts, money, training, everything—is drawn into our patterns at precisely the right time. When we understand that meetings that seem casual and accidental are really part of the larger Plan, we are more likely to be fully present with whomever or whatever crosses our path.

When we say yes to Spirit, we don’t really know what we might be asked to do in the future. Our soul knows our deepest intention and will set in motion the attraction that brings all the preparation we need. And this can also mean disappointments at an ego level. Wherever we have a weakness that could compromise our intention, it will rise to the surface asking that we address it. We could run to the ends of the earth to escape a situation and discover that it has arrived with us. “Seek and you shall find” is a working principle of magnetism that at-tracts to us people and circumstances based on the contents we are holding, consciously or unconsciously, in our psyches. The trick is to know what we’re seeking.

From pages 248-249 of BAREFOOT ON HOLY GROUND

Twelve Considerations of Faith
1. Faith invites us to dare, to dream, to let go and fly.
2. Faith accepts life cycles that create, sustain, and destroy.
3. Faith lays down the burden of being in control of everything.
4. Faith calls forth the Light from the darkness of self and others.
5. Faith is the declaration of belief in essence, not appearances.
6. Faith knows. Hope, a worthy relative, is merely optimistic.
7. Faith requires trust in inner guidance and powers not seen.
8. Faith accepts timing, affirming the unfolding universe.
9. Faith accepts all people and circumstances met on the path.
10. Faith plants seeds without asking for the harvest.
11. Faith trusts the necessity for purification, even when it is painful.
12. Faith will dive into the deepest oceans to gather the pearls.

Prayer
Beloved Creator, here is my heart, fill it with love.
Here is my mind, fill it with truth.
Here is my body, fill it with renewal.
Here is my spirit, fill it with faith.

Affirmation
I walk in fatih, knowing that everything that enters my path offers opportunities for growth, clarity, and service.

Quotes
We never know how high we are till we are called to rise
And then if we are true to plan our statures touch the skies.
—Emily Dickinson

First you jump off the cliff and you build your wings on the way down.
—Ray Bradbury

From pages 270 and 271 of BAREFOOT ON HOLY GROUND