On The Road To Find Out: Raw Soul, Dirty Soles

Eight days- forty-three hours of work, six hours at the gym, four movies, eight showers, two hours of meetings, and countless cups of coffee- later, I haven't found many moments of 'reverence'. Reverence is something hard to find, especially when you are looking for it.

I focused on the time that I always seem to have uninterruptedly to myself and made sure that I said my daily prayers every single night before I went to bed regardless of how late/early the

time was or how exhausted I was. This isn't completely new for me, because since I turned fifteen (the age of spiritual maturity in the Baha'i Faith) I have been trying to say my obligatory prayers everyday; however there was something in making such a conscious effort this week, and not letting myself just slide into bed when it has become too late and I figure I'll just say it the next day anyways. This has become a dangerously easy habit to get into when I am coming home from work after one in the morning a few nights a week. So this week was really good, my daily obligatory prayer has become like... brushing my teeth. I can get into bed without doing it, but I will definitely get up five minutes later because I know I won't sleep anyways, or wake up feeling like I have little furries on my teeth- or perhaps my soul.

That was a great success. Reverence tho? I don't know. In the 'Sacred Moments' book, with the daily virtues in it, many of the quotes Linda Kavelin Popov has chosen had to do with connection to the earth when finding reverence.

I connected to the earth very tangibly on April 16th. Toms Shoes hosted a Day Without Shoes. It is an incredible company with an admirable vision that I mentioned in my last post. I decided to participate in the barefoot day even tho noone else in this area was. I didn't really make a big deal of it, I just didn't wear shoes. Thank goodness the weather was warm and sunny! I really only got into one conversation about why I didn't have shoes on. Everyone else just 'wooted' about summer and gave me thumbs up. The ladies that I did talk to were at an autobody shop here in town. While I was waiting for an estimate on a friend's car we started chatting in the office when one of them asked about why I wasn't wearing shoes.

I told them about kids in Ethiopia and other parts of the world that don't have shoes and get foot parasites and other 100% preventable debilitating diseases from the ground they walk on, and many of them aren't allowed to go to school barefoot. From there we talked about different places of the world and my travels and eventually the Baha'i Faith. One of the ladies of really interested and wrote down the spelling of the Faith and had a lot of questions. I love moments of spiritual connectedness with complete strangers!

It was fun to wear barefeet in a lot of ways, but at the end of the day my soles were beaten up from the cement and stones and fresh black pavement I had to navigate across outside another autobody shop. I can't imagine doing that day after day, regardless of the weather. Ouch. Buy Toms friends!