SpaceClear Reflections

Starting Over

Posted on31. Aug, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

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September. It’s my favorite month of the year.
More than just it being one of the most beautiful and bountiful months in New England where I live, September has always been a time of shift and new beginnings…
An invitation to show up, regroup, renew, start over.
But you don’t need to wait until September or New Year’s [...]

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Remembering

Posted on27. Aug, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

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I came across this poem recently tucked deep in a file on my computer I called “Remembering.” I know nothing about the author Jonathan Leavy,* or how this poem found me. It must have been one of those emails that went around the block a few times. Written on the morning of the famous 2004 [...]

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Expanding and Contracting

Posted on13. Jul, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

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I adore this line by the poet Rumi:
“Your deepest presence is in every small contraction and expansion, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.”
As it relates to clearing the clutter in our lives, it resonates so much for me. So I went online and found the poem. Enjoy!
Birdwings
“Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a [...]

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Letting Go

Posted on04. Sep, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

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Letting go. Those two words again.
Our daughter. Only child. College. 2,000 miles away. At times this transition feels really huge. When I think there’s no more withdrawal, I’ll hear a song on the radio, or I’ll walk by her room, or catch her beautiful face smiling at me from a photo on the wall, [...]

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Meet Them At the Door Laughing

Posted on03. Jul, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

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Accepting what is. Laughing ’til it hurts. Birdsong. The feeling of pure spacious ease. Taking nothing personally. Joyful anticipation. Dancing or listening to really hot Latin music. Rumi’s infinite wisdom in the poem below.
Those are some of the ways I experience freedom.
How about you?
This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, [...]

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The Beauty of Doing What You Love

Posted on05. Jun, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

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If your read my last post, you probably saw that I was experiencing a rather “roomy” moment, thanks to the wisdom of my new BFF, 13th century Persian mystic and poet, Rumi.
I resonate with everything about the guy. His words infuse every cell of my being. I can’t take my eyes off of the richly [...]

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Feeling Rumi

Posted on02. Jun, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

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“Let the beauty we love be what we do.”–Rumi
I re-discovered Rumi last week. I went on the internet looking for something else and landed on a very unassuming site that had something like 50 poems by this 13th century Sufi mystic. I ended up spending the better part of two hours scrolling down each one, [...]

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House Blessing

Posted on19. May, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

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“On the threshold the entire past
And the endless future
Rush to meet one another.”
–Gunilla Norris, Being Home
My friend Nancy and her husband are building a house from scratch in their hometown of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Copied below is the gorgeous blessing that they placed in a jar and buried in the ground [...]

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Simplify, Simplify…

Posted on03. Apr, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

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“Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.”
––Henry David Thoreau
A big low-pressure system seems to have moved in to affect my entire household. First a major-ugly basement flood. Then a major-ugly laptop crash. Husband sick, off and on with very bizarre stomach flu that affects him only in the morning. Daughter deciding where to [...]

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Awareness Changes Everything

Posted on10. Mar, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

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“I feel completely different today. Almost like my meltdown
created space for a whole new me.” (sbv)
If you read “Massaging a Meltdown” (Feb 23, 2009), my blog post which describes a rough re-entry I had after two weeks in the sun in Mexico, you might be interested to know what happened next:
Nothing…Everything.
Here’s what I did:
Nothing.
The emotional [...]