(Be)coming clean.

Paradox.

I am clean, and I am coming clean, and I am becoming clean.

Clean/pure. Spiritually speaking.

I think coming clean about dirt is the most beautiful way we become clean.

Been judging someone, stop, maybe they’re a beautiful soul.

Been lying about something, tell the truth, it will bring you closer to the other person in ways that lies could never.

Easier said than done. We perceive the ugliness of our dirt to be more dirty than it is. It’s a lie we tell ourselves, that our dirt is so bad we could never expose it.

Expose it.

To live with integrity you must have honesty.

No one gets through a day without getting dirty, so what makes your dirt the worst?

Spiritually coming clean requires connection. Make the connection and let all of it go.

Coming clean with other humans is hard, but so worth it.

I’d rather be the girl who falls on her face every day and admits it than the girl who falls on her face everyday and hides. Either way you fall.

Clean.
(Be)coming clean.
I am coming clean.
Clean.

I’m impatient.
I’m a gossip.
I’m broken.
I’m uptight.
I’m a shopper.
And I’m also pure.

I’m loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, and self controlled, and I’m not.

Just coming clean.

A photographic journal of my past year.

This past year has taken me from a naive (okay ignorant) soul who thought she had it all figured out at 22, to a soul who admits she will always, always be learning and that even on her death bed, she won’t have fully grasped it.

It: life, love, God

Closed to open.

A closed fist can’t give, but it also can’t receive. A closed soul can’t truly give and it can’t truly learn. It can be confidence and it can also be fear. Confident in my truth but afraid of everything, failure, debate, ideas. It’s hard to be compassionate, honest, and vulnerable when you’re closed. It’s easy to criticize out of fear, and be incredibly judgemental out of a lack of knowledge perceived as ultimate knowledge.

An open palm can take and give. I can know my hand and who it’s worshipping, but I can also be honest, vulnerable, compassionate, growing. My soul doesn’t have to be static, a set of rules, but a growing giving and taking and learning that’s never done or finished.

I’m not hoping to reach some mystical point of perfection. Perfection is a Greco-Roman ideal, but I am hoping to become more and more open.

All of the law and all of what the prophets had to say can be summed up in loving God and loving the other as much as I love myself. My God said this, and I paraphrased it. This means I should desire to be that inclusive. I can’t be inclusive with a closed fist.

The moon! La luna!

The setting: clear sky, tree lined streets, old homes, bikes, kids, parks, parents, hungover 20 something’s, birds singing, maybe a pleasant song stuck in your head

The exclamation: a young girl, 3 or 4 is standing on her front porch with who you assume is her mom, she’s all bundled up as any 3 or 4 year old should be on a March day in British Columbia, she looks forward, and with all the joy she can muster, she throws her hands up and out towards the blue sky, day time moon, “the moon, la luna!” she exclaims

The beauty: the moon is so magnificent so wonderful that it should be embraced and not only that but exclaimed about, one language isn’t enough

Capture that wonder.

Bottle that wonder and dab some on your wrists, your neck, before you step out next.

Soak in that wonder so nothing but admiration pours from your pores

The moon! La luna!