The Sacred Penning Podcast Season 5 Official Opener

The host of the Sacred Penning Podcast, Becca Ray, welcomes the listeners to Season 5 after experiencing technical issues due to Mercury retrograde. She reflects on a recent journaling retreat called The Beacon, where she encouraged women to be their best selves and find love and light within. Becca emphasizes the importance of mental health awareness and shares her personal journey. She discusses the heaviness of the world and the need for peace and joy. Becca also mentions her Six Weeks to Sunrise course and shares quotes about love and creating joy. She explains her daily routine for sacred penning, including breath work, reading devotionals and the Bible, and journaling. Welcome back to the Sacred Penning Podcast. I'm your host Becca Ray. Welcome officially to Season 5. It's been a few weeks since I had a handful of teaser episodes and then Mercury retrograde. I'm just going to blame it on that. Mercury retrograde hit and every sort of technical issue I could have had, I did. I have to laugh at it now, but for about 10 days, I did not have a working computer. Two of my computers died in one hour span, one Saturday. I didn't know what was going on. My phone was giving me issues. Everything was giving me issues for, I want to say, a period of about two weeks. It took 16 hours to fix the computer that I am podcasting on with you now. I am so grateful that that particular challenge is over. If you face any sort of technological challenges, you know what I'm talking about. It's good to put those behind us. As I am recording this, it is Saturday. A week ago this Saturday, I held an absolutely beautiful journaling retreat. I called it The Beacon because I was calling women to be the best and brightest version of themselves, to be bold and to shine their light in the world. I also called them to feel the love within, the beacon within, to help them in that process. That's what this whole season is about. As I'm recording this, I still have the background from the retreat. It's a beautiful lighthouse. I've never been to a lighthouse. I've never seen a lighthouse in person. I've never been out on the waters and seen one. I've only seen them in movies, but they're fascinating to me. One of the things that I say I am in the world, and everyone is, is a little tea light candle. A little tea light candle that when we are feeling the love inside us, we can light up the fragrance of others and ourselves and surround the world with the most beautiful fragrance around. We need more of that in the world. It's also still Mental Health Awareness Month. May is a really important month to me. One of my friends is extremely devoted to that cause, mental health, and letting people know it's okay not to be okay. If you're not okay in this moment listening to this podcast, I also want to send you so much love. My devotion, my dedication, my commitment to you is to be vulnerable and real. Mental health hasn't always been amazing in my life. I had a lot of trauma. I had a lot to work through, and I've done my work, and the work continues. You never quite, quote unquote, arrive this side of heaven, but we do our best. Loving one another and being a beacon, being the light to others to help them through whatever it is that's going on is really important work. Thank you for keeping your light on, for seeking the light, and for continuing to seek joy on the other side. The world's a heavy place right now. I have children coming to me in my classroom and asking me really difficult questions. I had a little girl last week come up to me so excited. You know, we're saying hello in the morning, and she says to me, is it over? And I said, what, sweetheart? So, is what over? She said, is the war over? I saw the people are protesting. And I said, well, not quite. She said, oh, because I was praying to Jesus the night before to end the war, and I was hoping he heard my prayers. And it took everything not to well up with tears. And instead, I smiled. And I told her, keep praying. He's hearing you. That's a step in the right direction. Whenever we're protesting, whether it be a war or a war inside us or a war we're paddling in our mind, the best way to approach it is not to go to war with it, but to find peace within it. And that's what I do with Sacred Penning. I hope that this practice and this season will help you to dip in, delight, and discover the peace within you. This past week, I also started our course. We started our Six Weeks to Sunrise, Elevate Your Summer course. And today, we are on day three. And we have a 40-day course, a number of weeks where a very small group of women, I only have 12 in this course, and I capped it at that for a reason, because this container needs to be intimate and devoted and really doing some deep and beautiful spiritual work. I kicked off the course with three different quotes. And I wanted to share those with you on the opening of season five of this podcast. The first quote is from Lao Tzu. Quote, being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. I hope that when you put your pen to paper and you think about some of the loving truths that I share with you, that you are the one you find, giving you the strength, giving yourself the courage to see what's on the paper and to look at it through a lens of love. Look at it with compassion. Rest into it. Find your journaling practice as a practice of sacred rest within the pages. The second quote is from the book of Jeremiah. Quote, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness, have I drawn thee, end quote. To know that I am an artistic creation of the most beautiful love that we can even imagine and that you are also a unique masterpiece drawn by a creator, a creative loving force and spirit that loves you so much that he wouldn't draw you with carelessness. He wouldn't draw you haphazardly. Every intimate detail from the number of hairs on your head was planned for to be celebrated and honored. That's something that should leave you in awe. We're put here for joy. We're put here to experience joy beyond measure. We're put here for joy beyond measure. We're put here for joy beyond measure. We're put here for joy beyond measure. We're put here for joy beyond measure. We're put here for joy beyond measure. We're put here for joy beyond measure. We're put here for joy beyond measure. Today we're able to take action when your heart is moved from a place of genuine love. And I hope that using your pen and connecting to your body, your mind, and your spirit will help you not only to heal but to thrive, to be that beacon in the world that I've spent about the last week really thinking about. Somatic meditative journaling is a sacred practice to me. And I've had a lot of questions over the last couple weeks. What is this sacred penning thing? Who do you think you are to hold this out? People have accused me of being, how shall we say it politely, not Christian because I include meditation in the practice. I hate to say it, but if you go back into the Bible, David meditated on the word. And what did he create? The Psalms. To sing. Singing. Singing with a perfect heart, no matter what was going on around him and no matter the mistakes he made. Singing with a perfect heart for God. The Lord Jesus Christ separated himself many times from the group to meditate and think on the word. And I think that's the promise that we're given. These promises of love that if we connect to and dip into and delight in, we'll discover are what we need to help us through the day. Here's a sample of my daily routine with sacred penning. It's a mixed modality practice. I have done this every day since about last summer. My journaling practice has evolved. I, on the podcast in the past, have led people to a place of joy and discovery through simple journaling prompts. But this is something that goes a little bit deeper. For about the first five minutes, I turn on some relaxing sacred music. Things that I have found are from music healers, things that align with the quiet part of my spirit. Some days I don't even include the music. And I practice breath work for about five minutes. I really attune or listen to how my body is feeling that day. And even before this, from the moment I put my feet on the ground, I've stretched my arms to the sky and I've said, Abba, I am yours. I've already done a somatic stretch and an affirmation, dedicating the day to receiving the best love that's possible. So I take about five minutes, and either with music or not, I practice some breath work patterns. I then spend about five minutes reading a devotional. And I've had two devotionals over the past three years. The first one was even longer, actually, now that I think about it. The first devotional by Sarah Young, I was given a gift in 2019 by a coworker. And I've been using that devotional since 2019 up until this past fall, fall of 2023. I thought it was time for a new devotional. I had already learned the lessons and almost memorized the Bible passages that were in that particular devotional. I had learned to appreciate what I had read. And the second one that I've been really dedicated to, also by Sarah Young, this one I've been reading since October. I haven't even gone through a full year cycle with it. I spend about five minutes in the morning reading that devotional. And then I explore for five minutes reading the Bible, a physical Bible. It's pages. I have a study Bible where I will read the actual passages that Sarah Young talks about. I will then usually turn on some soothing or sacred music or sometimes an uplifting song that comes to mind that I can really lose myself in. For example, today I thought of a musical. It's so funny. I thought of a movie that I had watched with my son when he was little. And You Know Better Than I from Joseph King of Dreams was what I meditated on this morning when I did my personal journaling time. My journaling time is based on morning pages. I always have at least two to three pages of fluid flow. I am reflecting and meditating and in a soothing. Pattern where my pen is to paper almost the whole time for those twenty five minutes that I journal and I have at least at least three pages. That body of work for morning pages is by Julia Cameron and her right for life series with something that I focused on in season four, maybe even season three. It's been such a long time, but Julia Cameron's morning pages for something that developed into not right for life, but journals for life for me. And it's now part of the sacred penning practice. So I have my sacred music and breath, my five minutes of devotional, my five minutes of Bible reading, and then exploring and thinking about what I just read and anything that comes to mind. Any little thing stream of consciousness that comes as a response to what I read as a prompt. Sometimes I will take my prompt from the night before. And take three words, sometimes it's one word and I will put it on the page and also help me to think about lessons that I need to keep integrating. I then take five minutes to reflect. Circle one to three words. And then I meditate. So I take 10 minutes to do a meditation. Sometimes it's a guided meditation I find on YouTube or a meditation app. Sometimes it's just listening to a Christian song or sacred music. Sometimes I think about one word. From my journal and think about that and offer that to God for him to guide me. So I do my 10 minutes of meditation and then I end with five minutes of somatic stretching. That's the end of the morning sacred penning routine. And there's a whole body of research on my website about all of these things, breath work, meditation, somatic stretching, journaling, all the science behind it. So if you want to read or look into that a little more closely, that's all on my website. I did a lot of research when I had my memoir, Embodying Joy, a heart journal, a memoir with journal space for body, mind, and spirit. And a lot of people learn more easily these days by integrating into an experience of knowledge. There are videos, there are podcast episodes, there are quick little things that you can explore to kind of get behind the science of why I combine these modalities. So that's my morning. I write down an affirmation before I continue my day and I write that down three times. And I carry that affirmation with me on a little sticky note. Once in a while I leave it on my calendar if it's something that I don't want to think about all day at school. I'm a school teacher. And then I come home and look at it again. My afternoon is my morning and afternoon are spent teaching little ones. It's adorable. And then I come home and I have an evening routine. Just before bed, this routine is five minutes of sacred music and reading. So it could be something from earlier this morning that I really wanted to dip into. It could be a new Bible passage that I was curious about. It could be a quote from a friend who has a great inspiring podcast. It could be anything. But most of the time it's something that I was thinking about earlier in the day that I wanted to dig into a little bit more. So I read that for five minutes and listen to some music. I take some deep breaths. I don't go into any specific breath patterns unless I need to serve myself. I always listen to my body. And if I need to do a little extra breath work at night, I do. Then I do 15 minutes of journaling and five minutes to reflect. Again, it's always based on whatever the prompt was that I was reading about or something that I had written down that I was thinking about during the day. And then again, five minutes of somatic stretching and I go to bed so easily. I'm well rested. I feel like I've released things. I feel like I've integrated things. And it takes 60 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night. And if I want to add to that, I can. If I want to cut it back a little, you should always leave some room for spontaneity. And if you're not enjoying writing in your journal, then you have to ask that question. That can be a prompt in itself. But as you're learning something, of course, you're developing your muscles. And as we're developing our journal muscles and our journaling muscles, even starting with five minutes of writing a day can be something. Build it up to 10. Build it up to 15, 20. For my course, it's 30 minutes because most of the women that are in this are really wanting to see what a journal for life practice is and how it can serve them. Most people in my course container want to see what integrating mind, body, and spirit tools into surrounding your journaling practice can do. My sacred penning cycle is actually called the sacred rest penning cycle. I published it last week. And it goes through a series of centering, that's my morning, surrendering, that's my day, and then celebrating at night. Even the Bible passages that I choose to focus on in the course help one to lean into the promises that were given of this great love. Surrendering to those promises and seeing what can happen. And then celebrating what we learned throughout the day, what good we could find, what appreciation we could find, what love we could apply to whatever happened that day. So in essence, it's grounding, it's receiving, and then praise. The sacred penning cycle is devoted to this truth, one that I ground in and I discovered a few years ago. It's from the book of Isaiah. Quote, in returning to me and rest, you shall be saved. Quietness and confident trust is your strength, end quote. I had been leading such a crazy, busy, overexerted life. I was burnt out, burnt toast. And it's really interesting that I found this particular nugget of wisdom exactly when I needed it most. And then a couple months ago, it popped back up into my life, and I had to take some steps back. I took about 10 weeks off of social media. I had like a little private author's page on Instagram just to keep me connected at all to the outside world other than my teaching. I devoted myself to my family. I really looked into what was going on in my body. I made a little extra money for our family. I took on a little part-time job. Didn't make a lot of money, but it did help our family a little. But in not doing the things that served me, in not being able to share my heart, in not being able to help other people with their journaling, I cut off my heart, and it really hurt. I guess I was leaning into and resting from a lot of the pressures that I had been previously putting on myself, but at the same time, I was anxious and itchy to get out of those patterns that weren't serving me. I also discovered during that time that my body was really not very healthy. I had been doing a lot of self-care, and it had been serving my mind and my spirit, but I had forgotten about the body part. And so I started digging into that, too, and I started bringing that to my journaling. That's when I really stepped up and made sure that my breath work and my somatic stretching were part of this practice. Putting everything together that has served me has helped me to lose almost 40 pounds since February, and it's not about the number. My goal is down 50 by 50 because it's catchy and cute, and my goal is by my husband's birthday in August just as a target date, and I'm pretty close. May to August, I'm definitely going to lose those last 10 to 11 pounds. I'm kind of at a standstill the past two weeks, but I've also not been feeling well with my feminine cycle. And let's just say that the period before menopause, that particular period of time, I have a lot to learn about that, too. So I'm digging in and doing that work for myself as well. But if I didn't have this practice, I wouldn't discover any of these things that I needed to be doing. I wouldn't have found the rest I needed in a pretty hectic schedule of working two jobs that really wasn't serving me anyway. When I finally sat down with my doctor about a month ago at this point. And talked about what was worth it more, my health. Or the little extra money that I was bringing in. We decided my health was more important. The rest was more important. Now I'm having this course and these retreats and things like that, but they don't feel like work to me at all. They're pure joy. I don't find time elapsing. I don't know that I'm doing work. I feel good about what I'm doing. Yeah, there's a little bit of money made, but it comes from a place of love. And it feels like rest to me. Making sure that self-care in these quiet spaces and leaving spaces for joy to pop up at the tip of your pen, to pop up spontaneously in your life. It's critical to recognizing you as the sacred one who's in the sacred penning cycle. You are the beloved. You are the one who has been given this gift of adventuring throughout life. Through the good, the bad, the ugly, the contrast. Trying to make sense of it. But in the end, surrendering it. Returning it. Anything that's not serving you. Holding it out and saying, take it back. You need to help me. You need to help me handle this. You need to rest in quiet, confident strength in you. It's all about trust. Learning to trust that love. Learning to trust yourself. And it's an absolutely beautiful process. Breathing into my journaling. Stretching into my journaling. Feeling my pen in my hand and the pages in my journaling. Feeling my heartbeat. Feeling the music moving within me. Making sure that the whole time I'm connected to my body and as I am writing things down, listening to what my body is telling me. Being fully present for those 60 minutes and those 30 minutes a day. Let's take a deep stretch. If you're sitting, lift your hands all the way up to the sky super tight. Make them as tight as you can as if you're trying to poke holes through the ceiling. And let them drop. Same thing with your feet. If you're sitting, try to push them into the ground. Make your legs and everything below your waist super tight. Push into the ground. And release. Take the middle part of your body. Make that all squeezed to hold the top and bottom parts of your body together really tight. Squeezing. And release. Now take everything from your shoulders up and your head. Make everything super tight. Make your face tight. Everything in your neck muscles tight. Lift your head up as high as you can, as tight as you can. Release. Now we're going to take three deep breaths. Kind of breathe in for three and out for three. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Breathe in. And out. Breathe in for three. In through your nose and out through your mouth. In for three. Out for three. And a nice, releasing, audible breath. Now we're going to take a few more deep breaths. We're going to take a few more deep breaths. We're going to take a few more deep breaths. We're going to take a few more deep breaths. We're going to take a few more deep breaths. We're going to take a few more deep breaths. We're going to take a few more deep breaths. Inspiration. In returning to me and rest, you shall be saved. In quietness and confident trust is your strength, unquote, Isaiah 30, 15. Today's prompt. What would it feel like to return to rest? What would it feel like to be quiet in my body, mind, and spirit? What would it feel like to trust in love, to provide my strength versus striving to earn anything? Let's take five minutes to write to the beautiful music of Masood Taj. Masood has offerings on his website, and he is a musical healer. He also works with Compassion Nashville. Today's selection is Dream Maker A. Enjoy. We'll be back in five minutes. We'll be back in five minutes. We'll be back in five minutes. 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