This is long but interesting....

Dear Ones ~ I want to share this affirmational prayer with you today. A prayer to remind you that you are held. I simply want you to know, somehow, some way you are held. When you say it, how do you feel?

You are held, even when it doesn't feel like you are held. Even when the world seems like it is moving too fast. Even when more and more challenging news comes in. Even when you are trying to make sense of the senseless. Even when people you love are suffering. Even when you are suffering. You are held in love.

How is this possible? I have no idea, but somehow I feel it to be true. That doesn't mean everything goes my way, to affirm this feeling. Rather being held means, that as I go my way, I am practicing the feeling of being held and in that, create a space of holding in which others feel held, and then I am held. A reciprocity of holding. It is a beautiful idea that Indigenous cultures know, that modern peoples have often forgotten. Yet in the Red Thread Connection, we bring this awareness forward.

Through choosing to belong, we have a chance to make others feel as if they belong. This line of the Prayer of Saint Francis has been reverberating within me since Amber sang it to me last week over the phone.

"...Grant that I may
Not so much seek to be consoled
as to console
To be understood,
as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive"

Feeling held isn't only an affirmation that there is something greater that you can name. Some of you have a name you use to call on the Divine and some of you don't right now, even if you did before. Just the name "Divine" works well when at a crossroads of knowing what to call on, they know who they are :)

Being held is a practice of knowing there are many of us here along the red thread that are also holding you in this weave, and that you are holding us. Being held means you invite yourself to practice feeling held, even without external evidence - and it can relax your nervous system and warm your heart and hands. Consider drawing for a few minutes, just making the shape of feeling held - and notice your energy changes. Practicing feeling held, IS being held, is this relationship with Source - however you understand that dynamic power of Creation.

This morning, I am practicing, feeling held - for me it is the embrace of the universe, the quantum reality that if I say I am held, imagine I am held, practice it in my body, it is happening in real time. When I draw it, it is the amplification of the sensation. This is where science meets spirit. This is my happy place, the place of dancing between worlds.

I don't need it to be proven that the Divine exists, yet it is proven that "LOVE" acts differently on the field and matter than hate. This is a wonderful evidence that amplifies my practice of intention. Where loves is at the center of all choices. This is at the ROOT of Intentional Creativity as a philosophy, that the energy of intention we bring to what we are doing, making, being, changes everything.

As for me, I am focusing less on the pandemic and more on Black Lives Matter and Re-Membering work. And doing an incredible amount of heart-breaking research on what is happening with women in the world during this time. You can't believe it, really, it is beyond my comprehension even though I have studied it my whole adult life.

For me, this is a cycle of noticing. How I feel, how I react, what I am called to.

I love leading my own life from the perspective of teaching and sharing. In real time, I am sharing gifts I have and inviting you to your own. Intentional Creativity awakens me, and keeps me in full presence and I am so grateful for this practice. I think of it less like a 'process' to complete, and more like a lifeline practice, a discipline. Every painting is a part of my practice.

Mostly, I wanted to just check in and say I am thinking of you who are on my thread....

I pray you feel held, by you, by us, by the universe, by the Heart of the Divine.

Weaving with Red Thread,

Shiloh Sophia

Letters from the Red Thread Cafe