“Let there be many windows to your soul, that all the glory of the world may beautify it.” – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I have been using the Living Forward process since 2016. The value and reasons for this process have, for me, stood the test of time, personal trials, and daily life. It involves periodic review, using one’s imagination, exercising the discipline of reflection, and willingness to confront the reality of where one is versus where one wants to be. This week I am taking my quarterly retreat for the Life Planning process.
Resetting Windows of Opportunity
This is the third quarter review where the status of the goals set for the year comes up against the reality of time remaining. There are unique aspects to each quarter of the year that factor into goals:
- The first quarter is winter moving to spring, thus begins with more inside activity, evolving into early spring outdoor activities
- Second spring to summer requires goals to be or work around spring gardening
- The third quarter is summer vacation, travel, and hot Kansas temps – more indoor activities
- The fourth quarter is, for us a short one since Holiday celebrations, beginning with Thanksgiving, and including our anniversary, my birthday, and Christmas occupy our focus and time.
Thus, as I embark on my review at this time, I am looking at only two months to complete the remaining goals.
Windows of Imagination
I am excited. As part of the preparation for my retreat day, I have been thinking about this whole imagination thing again. It’s rather like a window. It beckons. It teases. It stimulates.
The word imagination in Hebrew scripture means “the making place”. Genesis 2 says that God made or imagined man out of the dust of the earth. The Hebrew has within it the sense that before God made man out of the earth, He imagined mankind. The making place.
I like that. We “make” things first in our thoughts or imagination before they are made in the physical. It works both in the positive and negative and we get to choose. Life Planning puts us in the choosing rather than reacting place.
The Making Place
Some windows stimulate memories and imagination. A few years ago, when I returned to my hometown for a high school reunion, I discovered that one of my classmates lived in the house where my dad’s first employer lived.Attached to the back of the house was “the shop” where they sold automobiles and other vehicle parts. My classmate graciously invited me over to visit. It was marvelous to step back in time.
As I walked through the shop I heard the sound of my Dad’s voice, the guy talk as transactions were made and his laughter as he joked around. In spite of the years that had passed the smell of automotive dust, oil, and machine parts lingered.
The Window in the Door
However, it was “The Old Window” that brought things together. The window in the door began the transition from the shop to the house. It transported you from the t dusty, rough working world, through a tidy business office into the elegant, neatly appointed home of Mr. and Mrs. Burroughs.
The house was usually quiet with only the sound of a ticking mantle clock. The colors were a soft foam green done in a neo-classical decor. There was crystal everywhere. It was heaven and I was not supposed to be there uninvited or unsupervised. Too many pretty and fragile things that curious hands might break.
Old Windows
When explored they fling open the imagination. Whether the windows of our soul or a tangible, physical window, they serve to lead us into the making place. Into places forgotten or tucked away, and to places yet to be found. I will be peering anew through the windows of my imagination this week. Daring to dream from the making place as I examine the goals remaining.
Most of them involve writing. Rescuing stories otherwise lost. Yes, I am excited.
What windows will you peek through this week?