Food For Thought - "Stretch"

"Stretch"
C2003 Gail Pursell Elliott
 

There was a little jingle I was taught long ago that we used when doing exercises in kindergarten. It went something like this –

Bend and stretch,
Reach for the stars
Here comes Jupiter
There goes Mars
Bend and stretch
Reach for the sky…

I can’t remember the rest of the words. Every time we stretched we had to reach up as far as we could.

There are all sorts of ways that we stretch ourselves, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Most of us are very familiar with physical stretching exercises. No matter how accomplished an athlete may be, every practice or training session begins with a period of stretching.

We stretch to get the kinks out of our joints, warm up our muscles, and keep us limber. Stretching gets us ready for the work of developing our strength and endurance. Without the limbering and warming up of stretching, we might get a cramp.

Mental, emotional and spiritual stretching do pretty much the same things for us.

How do we stretch ourselves spiritually? A good warm-up exercise is to make a list of the qualities that we value that we see in ourselves, such as loyalty, integrity, or compassion. These provide the foundation for developing our spiritual strength and endurance.

These qualities have nothing to do with our accomplishments, external abilities or our net worth, which are surface. They have to do with the substance of what we find within ourselves, the things we have that money, position, or education cannot provide. They comprise the substance of what I call our “intangible net worth.”

If we wish to expand our net worth we track our assets and adjust for changing conditions. We must do the same thing with our intangible net worth. We must sometimes take risks and reach beyond what we think we can do to achieve a toehold on the next level of insight and awareness.

One of the most difficult yet freeing experiences of reaching for the stars is that of stretching our capacity for forgiveness. If we practice the daily release of circumstances with forgiveness in small ways, such as forgiving the traffic light that turned red when we were late, we keep ourselves limber for the times when it becomes the most difficult to cut ourselves loose.

If not, we may suffer a cramp when we need our strength and endurance the most. The farthest reach that may ever challenge us might be to be able to stretch enough to forgive the most unforgivable person or situation in our lives. When we’ve not warmed up that spiritual ability, kept it limber, the emotional cramp we experience during those times can double us over in pain and immobilize us.

Each of us has purpose and a mission that only we can fulfill right where we are. When we bend and stretch, reach for the stars, we may find that the stars we are reaching for exist within us, waiting to illumine a deeper insight and greater awareness, to shine into our lives, our environment, and into the lives of others.

Have a Great Day and be good to yourself.  You deserve it!

Gail

Copyright ©2003 Gail Pursell Elliott All rights reserved.
Food For Thought is part of the Dignity and Respect message that is Innovations.