Author Archives: Jenni Taylor

15 Ways to Start Over

By: Jenni Taylor

  1. Be thankful. Journals, happiness jars, or even just an alarm set to remind you to be thankful for something for 10 seconds every day.
  2. Don’t be thankful, but be honest. The voice listening to those socially-unacceptable emotions is not worried about your piety or your artificial gratitude. It wants to have an honest conversation. Honesty in hard times is still just as worthy as the thankful thoughts in the good times.
  3. Set schedules. Scheduling will help you stop feeling guilty when you know you have set aside time for the important things. You can breathe a sigh of relief that there really are enough minutes in the day to do what needs to be done.
  4. Don’t set schedules. Time is not set in stone. There are days when freedom is more important than detailed plans, and when these out-of-hand, wild days happen, be accepting. Need ideas for a wild day? Here’s 14 ways to start a new journey!
  5. Dance. There is no “don’t dance” option here. Find music you love, guilty pleasures galore, and dance your butt off.
  6. Find a place. A place filled with comfortable knickknacks or one completely bare- whatever works. Make that place yours, make it uninterrupted, and make it holy. What you think, feel, write, and dream in that place is sacred.
  7. Practice forgiving. Forgiveness is like yoga- it’s an ongoing practice that never becomes perfect, but gets better with time. Forgive in small ways. Forgive the dishes for being dirty when washing is the last thing you want to do, forgive the messy children who ruined your dress, forgive the trains for being late and the meetings that scheduled themselves at an inconvenient times. Forgive, and let go, and then try to do it again.
  8. Only compare yourself to the person you were yesterday. Comparisons are sneaky and ruin…pretty much everything. Stop. You are still just as important as you always have been to the universe, no one else and their successes can change that. You are growing, you are learning, you are changing, and that is beautiful.
  9. Hug trees. Walk by a lake. Look at animals and learn from them. Connect yourself to nature, listen to what it is trying to tell you, protect it as best you can and I promise more peace will come to your soul.
  10. Read. Seriously. Need a suggestion…try one of our longer posts or check out NPR’s Book Concierge
  11. Memorize something. Something funny, something inspiring, something classical or not- but memorize it. Say it out loud, hear how beautiful you sound, feel the accomplishment of doing something poets and storytellers used to do to create magic for yourself and others. The words become your own, second nature, and a strange comfort to say at very surprising times in your life.
  12. Be passionate about something, and then be active about it. Even if it’s just once, like attending a protest for the first time or helping out at a prison. You will never forget it, you will grow, and it will make a difference.
  13. De-clutter. Keep the good stuff, and toss as much as you can of the rest. This goes for thoughts as much as for things.
  14. Write. Type, find a journal, use a pen you like. Share it…or don’t. Fiction, free writes, poems, words anything that lets you see the authentic you.
  15. Be wise. Learn something new this year, from both victories and mistakes, and share it with us here at Sophia’s Pockets. We’re listening.

The Fear of Loneliness

By: Jenni Taylor

The true knight of faith is always absolute isolation– Kierkegaard

I imagine a knight, the kind from storybooks with armor and a feathery plume. His armor is dented and dusty, his banner battered and torn. He has a face lined and wrinkled, that of Don Quixote- the man who would dream the impossible dream.

Don Quixote had his Sancho, but not always. There are moments in every knight’s life when he must go it alone, in the silences and the dark places. The monsters growl, the trees grow claws in the night, and the knight completely loses sight of his quest in favor of simply trying to survive.

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It is there, in the moments of darkness, despair, loneliness and weakness, that a God of love quietly reaches out his hand. It is not a call, barely a whisper, and sometimes he is silent. But it is only in the dark can his presence be felt, and only in the silence when we are able to hear the slightest hint of a love lullaby being sung to our hearts.

I believe we are meant to be knights. I believe we are supposed to stand strong against injustice, fight for the underlings, bring peace to the lands we live in. I also believe even the strongest of us need to find strength, that knights can falter or fail or get lost in the wilderness. The quiet and dark are feared, as knights tend to fear weakness and prefer to fake a loud show of bravado than to be alone with their faults. But there they are, all the same. They will only be beaten when we learn to be still and alone for the universe to whisper secrets in our ear. Don’t be afraid to listen.

Changing My Story

By: Jenni Taylor

I come from a family of storytellers. I can still hear my uncle’s voice, a baritone rumbling with hints of love hidden deep in the diaphragm, winding a yarn about an owl taking over his truck and making the rest of the family laugh until they couldn’t breathe. I can hear my aunt, who takes my face into her hands and tells me what her kitchen smelled like growing up, and suddenly the room is full of apple pie.

Stories change you. They pick you up, toss you about, tickle your heart and then prick it with pins. A good story is real, more real than real, in the velveteen rabbit way of love being bigger than facts.

Wisdom comes from stories. Scheherazade, the woman who changed the heart of a Persian king with her one thousand and one tales of adventure, love and loss. Samuel the prophet, who brought King David to his knees with the story of a poor man and his sheep. The creation stories, the myths, the legends spread across time existing to give us understanding, entertainment, warnings, hope, knowledge, and more questions.

I am living my own story now. I choose to let it intertwine with a story of a loving being who gives me purpose and adventure and courage to fight dragons. I cross paths with other stories, other beautiful human beings with expositions and rising actions and climaxes and nothing even close to a resolution quite yet. I have this crazy belief that we may be all a part of another story, one much bigger than all of us, that brings meaning and joy and connections and hope. I think if I can let myself be part of that bigger story, it will change me, and it will be absolutely worth it.

The Trees are Changing

By: Jenni Taylor

“Oh, what do the trees know,
Oh, letting their leaves go?
Oh, what do the trees see?
Oh, that is beyond me…”–Laleh

I live in a country where the day and time you were born is believed to set your course in the stars. Being born in the Chinese year of the snake, they say I was given bright eyes and the ability to shed my skins, slither out of houses and homes and countries and places and change my scales at will. I look back and I see my layers spread out across the mountains and plains, only as strong as my memories or writings or letters from friends who know what I am despite my many faces.

The sermon on the mount tells me to be meek and merciful, salt and light, a lily of the field and a rock foundation. It’s not shedding skins- it’s putting new ones on, layer by layer, pieces of creation teaching us lessons and molding our spirits like the very air we breathe.

“Good tress bear good fruit,” he says, and I think of the roots deep in the ground and of the fragile leaves that can be plucked by any passing hand. I think of the colors changing and the rings being added like new life veins every year, each one telling a story, each one reminding me the trees might have a better understanding than I do of spirituality and change and strength and weakness wrapped into each other like DNA strands.

I breathe deep and reach into myself to find that strong foundation, the hymns buried in me singing of God’s everlasting love and faithfulness. I look to the times when I was the most child-like in my wonder and belief in good, and I know that is when the bigness and smallness of the sermon on the mount is beginning to touch my insides and mold me into something new.

I embrace the antonyms and realize the human spirit is allowed to be controversial, because it’s simply big enough to be everything at once. So I decide to be a snake, and a tree, and a human being, and learn the lessons set out before me.

Movers and Shakers

By: Jenni Taylor

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
-Arthur O’Shaughnessy

I move. I shake. I dream. I forsake. I take trains and take chances, I make mistakes. I’ve lived in small rooms and big rooms, rooms with toads and stray cats, rooms with candles and comfort. I’ve been skinny Buddha and fat Buddha, the equivalent of Paul being content in all things, all places, at all times.

I only agree with Paul to a point. Contentment is oil for squeaky wheels, and I like being squeaky. Discontent- discontent is gas for the engine. It’s energy. Fire. Passion. Movement. Be content being uncomfortable. Be content wandering lone sea breakers and sitting by desolate streams.

But don’t be content with the way the world is. Move it, shake it, dream it into a new reality. How can we lose the world, forsake the world, be in the world but not of it? I suggest the very difficult task of uncurling your fingers around whatever you want the most. Let go, be free. Choose loneliness, because only in the quiet can your heart begin to grow, expand, move within your chest and burn with new fire.

Choose silence first, then as your heart begins to mold to a new form, go. Move. Dance. Put yourself in the world and smile like it’s the last day of your life. Give. Look into the eyes of everyone on the street and see their needs, bright and open and wounded. Sometimes, by choosing loneliness for yourself, you can eradicate it for others.

Everyone is a bit lonely, but that does not make them world changers. Set yourself apart, embrace your discontent, dance to your own beautiful music. Then see the world move, shake and crumble into loveliness.

Roots, Old and New

By: Jenni Taylor

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A wise person once told me to live in a place like my gravestone will be next door. You claim it as your own, make yourself part of the whole, and dive in with everything you’ve got.

When you give to people, you are giving to the place, too. Tears, laughter, blood from broken bones or broken hearts- it all spills into the ground and becomes food for roots. Relationships are tangible things, leaving vibrations in the air and under your feet long after you’ve gone.

Traveling, I set down roots. I make myself a part of that place. There are swing sets in Chicago, trees in Saint Louis, malocas in Peru, and dumpling vendors in China where I have left fingerprints and feelings and memories. Each new place I find myself, it becomes home.

I find myself home now. Not the physical house I grew up in, but surrounded by family and soon to be surrounded by friends. I am returning to old roots for a moment, for a breath of fresh air, of life and energy poured into my somewhat tired soul through the hugs of people I love dearly. I find myself blessed, with conversations and laughter that mean the world to me. I refresh myself before diving back into my new home with new roots reaching out ever so slowly in the jungle of Shanghai. I reach my roots out all over the world, feeling the community of individuals, families, teachers, friends, all who have made my life so incredibly rich.

I love my worldwide roots. Don’t be afraid to jump out, to find a new home, start something new. The ones you love will still be there for you.

Sacando las Raíces

By: Jenni Taylor

“Mi pecado es grande,” Cynthia joked, dragging a six foot root behind her to throw into the fire. “My sin is big.”

I was in Iquitos, Peru. A church recently bought a small plot of jungle ground outside of the city to build a missionary school. We had begun by sleeping in tents on shaky platforms made of sticks, but now it was time to clear the land for small houses and a maloca, a circular hut for meetings.photo1 (1)

The property was called the virgin jungle. We were, in effect, destroying a small piece of it. Some of the Peruvians came from the city; many others came from deep within the jungle and had done this many times before.

The men used slashing and burning to clear a stretch of a hillside, down to a small creek that flowed with clear, fresh water. The last mission school had still water, and students had come down with malaria. Cynthia, the young woman who had pulled out the root, was a survivor.

As the men slashed and burned, the women came behind. Mama Noemi, the mother of us all, crouched like a baboon over the burnt earth with her machete. She had loose breasts, strong hands, and wrinkles deep around her eyes. She had come to the mission school with her husband after she said she had been healed of blindness. She spoke more jungle dialects than any linguist at Harvard ever could.

The rest of us girls, eight of us or so, came behind mama. We crouched as she did and used our hands to pull out the root systems that had fed the trees for hundreds of years. We would pull and tug and hack away, sometimes two or three girls working at one root system weaving across the top of this small mountain. That’s when the joking began. We must be pulling out our sins, hacking away in this jungle heat and sweat.

As we pulled the ground, the soil and ashes began to give way to the whitest, purest sand I had ever seen. The afternoon light was beginning to fade into stretches of purple and yellow. The women went down to the creek to bathe, allowing cool water to soothe tired muscles. Mama Noemi crouched again, this time beating her laundry against a rock and then slapping it rhythmically into the water. The cooking fire lit up the dusk and smoke curled into the sky.

That night, after dinner and in the dark, we gathered in a circle and sang. A girl used a tambourine from the city, and a boy beat out a rhythm echoing Mama Noemi’s laundry on his cajon, a handmade jungle drum. The stars above wrapped their gauzy light around the southern cross constellation and twisted their way through the dark, twinkling with the same echoing rhythm and bringing their own music to the cacophony. This wild place, this tiny patch of untamed ground was becoming a home, and each song was a root of their own spirituality sinking into the ground and declaring the land theirs. So they sang, wailing to the sky, their spirits as wild as the jungle surrounding them.

Equality in Stardust

By: Jenni Taylor

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.– Ecclesiastes 9:10

I am mesmerized by the mystery of the finite being part of the infinite. I find myself a part of the adolescent state of humanity wondering, “why are we here?” realizing it might not even be the right question to ask.

We are the small- we know it now, looking further and further out to the stars. We are self-aware of our ignorance. Now, when do we find our place in “the big”?

Death is said to be the great equalizer. It’s true. Our bodies fade away, breaking back down into the particles they first came from. Star stuff, they say, the dust of the universe. Good, bad, ugly and beautiful all sent spiraling together in equal amounts of very scientific gases.

Though our bodies are scattered throughout the galaxies in rather equal measures, I think about our equality on earth. The equality of breath, of oxygen flowing into our lungs at the same rate as every other person, and what we decide to do with that oxygen. How breath can become breath of life or breath of spewing hate. I think about the equality of giving, how it is bottomless and continuous and has nothing to do with the amount we start out with. I think about the equality of souls, each one precious, despite its smallness or its place in the world.

We are much more alike than different, and we all have tentacles reaching out from our hearts straining to connect with something, anything. We are equal in our emptiness, and we are equal in our capacity to fill the emptiness of others with love.

So, before we turn to stardust and the working, planning, knowledge and wisdom are all gone- let’s equalize our buckets, giving and taking, and help each other out on this journey to the stars.741060_10100356163796891_698349742_o

Waking Up

A Good Morning in Thailand

I’m tired of being tired. Not just the physical tired, but the emotional tired that comes with stress, living in another country, work, a busy life, and a multitude of other problems clamoring for my attention at any given moment. I’m tired of rolling out of bed and mechanically getting ready to hit the grind. I want to live my life, not just survive it.

So this week I am waking up saying, this morning is for ME. I will fill my own bucket with sunshine, peace and purpose before I go out and start filling the buckets around me.

I stretch. I put my arms over my head and breath deep enough my belly looks like a balloon. I take a moment to remember how incredible having life is, and how beautiful it is to take one breath, and then another.

I dance, sing, hum, or spend a minute listening to the birds or Spanish ballads. I put at least a moment of music in me because there’s something about having a song in your heart that brings joy.

I read. Right now it’s one or two verses from Ecclesiastes, or a poem by Dylan Thomas, or a moment with something I already know from my Chinese book to give me a little extra confidence. Words bring life, and I choose to put those words on my tongue like nourishing honey.

I soak in the sunshine. If there is no sunshine, I look at the trees and remember that they too are waiting for the sun to come back, and they do so with patience and grace. I try to stand tall like they do, and hope I will be as wise as they are some day.

I eventually get to work, have my breakfast, and drink my coffee. I try to remember to keep all the things from the morning in me, and to take another deep breath when needed.

Habits are hard to form. There will still be days when the thought of getting out of bed is painful in itself, when life seems too stressful to face, when the thought of doing it all again brings dread. But if I can breathe in and sing my blessings even one more time this week than last, I know I’m learning to wake up right.

You Are Not What You Do

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“Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.” — C.G. Jung

By: Jenni Taylor

I’m what you call goal oriented. I aim for a solid A in my life- not an A plus, mind you (silly overachievers) but I try to be pretty darn good at whatever I’m doing. Sometimes it comes easy, like when I’ve just rocked a class with my skills and spread the knowledge, strutting out of the classroom with some designer shades and a cardigan like the badass I am. Sometimes it’s not so easy, the days when I sit down to write a sentence in Chinese with characters I have practiced thousands of times and then draw a complete blank, staring at an empty page and feeling utterly useless.

I fill my life with goals because I like to feel important. I like to feel acknowledged. I like to feel accomplished. But I remember those days when I was younger, trekking through the woods, the camp days where mirrors didn’t exist and my muscles were tenuous and strong and I touched the bark of trees thinking, I could go my whole life without a name, as long as I am here, as long as I am loved.

It’s becoming surprisingly hard to get back to those moments, those pure moments of childlike faith in unconditional love and the everlasting power of hugging a tree. Opening my heart to the world used to be easy. Now, it takes sincere practice, which is more of a failure than a success these days. I am constantly having to reawaken myself.

I was always told you are not what you do, but it’s a lesson I seem to have to learn over and over again. So here I am, ready to learn yet once again, to let go of the nonsense gripped so tightly in my fists and open myself again to being loved- just for me, little me looking out my window waiting for dreams to come.

I’m not what I do. Are you? Let’s live a life constant reawakening together.