Dangling Feet and Trail Names

You know what the joy of dangling our feet off the stool was as we ate our cereal in the summer? Not that our feet dangled, but that we were aware of them dangling. We were aware of the cereal, of the bird singing outside the screen, aware of the feeling of boredom and carelessness that drove us to feet dangling in the first place. Somehow growing up we lose that, until all we think about as we stand and gulp down our cereal is what project we have to finish this day, what assignment is due, who we have to call, what check to pay, what broken item to fix...We lose our moments and somehow get tricked into thinking we don't or can't ever have them anymore, instead of just excepting them as they come. I have a lot to do today, and I started wolfing down my Shredded Wheats standing at the counter. Then I poured just a little bit of peanut butter and chocolate, a generic sugary kid cereal I knew I shouldn't be eating, and I sat at the island on a stool, leaned my face in my hands, and dangled my feet. It was like magic. And suddenly there I was, in my own skin, sitting in my home on a summer morning, 25 years old and still a kid.


Had an awesome experience yesterday. I was named. Not given a name by people who love but don't know me, whose own biases and perspectives have invented a name that I will later grow to fit... I was named by a bunch of teenage girls sitting in a circle in the desert, a couple of trees overhead and a small creek rippling nearby. I was named after spending a week with these girls, and the only stipulations were that my name had to have a descriptive word and an element, and that I had to like and accept it. I sat in a circle with girls whose own problems have driven them to be sent to a place they don't like and a situation they can't control, and these girls shared with me all they had seen in me and what they thought was my personification. I was a little apprehensive as we began, feeling like I would be stuck with some sappy name I hated but had to pretend to like, a name like bright butterfly or shining fawn. All of the girls have names and some are pretty interesting. But as they sat and listed characteristics that I have...being positive, out going (I disagree with this one but what can you do?), caring, energetic and sometimes hyper, happy and bright, I was really touched to see they had gotten to know me, and they had good things to say.
Then the newest girl thew out a word to combine them all into one: "spirited". I loved it, if only because it sounds a little native american-ish, which I hoped would somehow or other make its way into my name. Then they tried to think of an animal that fit me, "spirited hummingbird" or something like, and I got ready to make the best of it, when another idea sprung up. That of water. "Spirited waters"? No, stream, like the one flowing past us at the moment. A stream because it's like a journey, it travels places and leads to things, incorporating the "seeker" aspect they had named earlier. I have a stream in my trail sign, because I love rivers and it is like a journey, so I was feeling very happy with where my name was going. And then they added to it, how sometimes a stream goes slowly and quietly, and other times it dances and skips along unfettered. How you only see the surface level to a stream, but there are all kinds of things going on underneath. They had so many things, things I've never thought of in relation to streams, (a topic I think on quite a bit), and I almost got tears in my eyes. It sounds so silly, but I was truly touched. They had found my name, and they had found it with generosity in their hearts. It makes me think that maybe I should give a little more to them.

Spirited Stream.

Time to mix a little more love in the waters.