Maintaining a prayerbook practice while traveling (#30daysofgoddess)

Transcript

hello it's molly riemer with bridges grove in 30 days of goddess and i wanted to make a separate prayer book flip through video specifically focused on prayer book practice and journaling practice while on a trip well away from your usual space and home and so these are the final pages of my march prayer book and then my april prayer books beginning pages as well and i will say i almost didn't bring the march book with me so we spent two weeks in virginia and we left on uh march 28th and got back on april 13th and i almost didn't take the march book with me because i thought it's only like three days like why would i do that and then i'll be stuck with this fat book and i'll have my other book and why don't i just not and then i realized that didn't feel like authentic to me i've maintained this practice with devotion and diligence for 460 days and leaving behind the one that was unfinished didn't make sense nor did trying to write a bunch of things in advance or do a bunch of pages in advance that also didn't make sense so i thought what the heck it doesn't take up much room i'm going to take it with me so one of the things i wanted to focus on is how i just how much i discovered or how much was reinforced for me that's a room that belonged to the next page that didn't get stuck down and what i wanted to point out is that there are little things to use in a prayer book everywhere to me that's part of this prayer book practices that discovery you know rediscovery there's magic everywhere that the goddess is everywhere and i really didn't need to bring very many of my own journaling supplies at all because there were things everywhere that i could use so i have a tendency when i'm traveling to use the maps so if you go to a visitor center there's usually a map of whatever it is that you're doing or some other kind of literature oh there's an interesting hawk zooming up there are usually maps there's brochures there's promotional literature and you can find pretty much everything you need there i did bring a bunch of stuff with me much of which i did not even get into so this page is a based on the art museums at colonial williamsburg where we went and i was specifically interested in the black history uh and the art of the enslaved black people who formed a backbone of the colonial experience as well so these pieces all came from a brochure on black history and then i saw these actual pieces in real life in the museum as well so i picked those out because that though that material was really impactful to me and i also appreciated how many of the stories and voices of those enslaved people were shared in the museum instead of being ignored or brushed over and so things like these little pots they a lot of times the colonial people that owned slaves they would have you know people work for them or force people to work for them and then so like potters and things the potter would then sell the pottery and the person who actually made it was unnamed but there was a potter like in the museum there was a potter and this was at a time when enslaved people it was illegal for them to know how to read and write and there was a particular potter who signed all his pottery anyway he was an enslaved man he signed all his pottery anyway and like pretty boldly and so they found more than 300 pieces of pottery in the area that were all made by him so they know that many other people also did pottery that they didn't sign and so i was really interested in stories like that and then i also got some flowers off one of the trees to include and found some feathers i was going to say one of these things about prayer book practice while traveling is that i my schedule is not the same as it is at home and so when i'm going places and doing things i often wouldn't work on my page i would write the poem and the affirmations in the morning and work on my little cards that i give away to our our goddess magic community on patreon which is patreon.com bridgesgrove and i would work on that but i would save the page and sometimes wouldn't even finish it till 10 o'clock at night and part of me would sometimes feel a little anxious about that or a little upset that it was taking me so long to get to it but that's part of the rhythm of being away is that you're not in your usual household rhythm and that's okay and i also a lot of the pages are really pretty simple they're pretty simple pages in that i would just use the map of where i went that day as the background and then make a little pocket and stick some stuff in we went to jamestown settlement living history museum and went on the three [Music] model boats that were reconstructions of the three ships that the european colonists came to the united states on and then i put her in here again that goddess from poetic goddess kimberly rodriguez it's kind of a reminder of the indigenous history of the land and this place it was very these were kind of energetically overwhelming places to go because it was so much that weight of colonization was so heavy it's so heavy in the land and the exhibits and the memories and the people and i and so many so many people lost and destroyed and then colonist stock is where i come from so it's a hard place to reconcile those things with the connection i feel to the land within my own ancestry etc anyway while we were there these little cardinal feathers we were standing in the fort and these little cardinal feathers just drifted down through the air and into my hand i was looking out and happened to see them falling through the air and so i held my hand out and caught them and that was kind of one of those moments and a reminder of kind of the the life that's still there over the heads of war and suffering so to speak so there was just something special about those little cardinal feathers drifting down like that and a reminder to me of that you know you have to like that that invitation that the world that the goddess offers to us every day to be alert for the magic keep your eyes open because it's everywhere all the time the resort where we were staying gave us chocolate chip cookies every day and they came in these little bags so i made a pocket out of one of the little bags they didn't the glue didn't stick very good so then i had to hold it out with stickers and we got new shoes for elena and i use the tag from her shoes to make a little addition here and and then again a map in the background this was the second part of the art museum at sunny landsburg and some flower petals in there and then our this book was over another one of those from the poetic goddess i just love that image and so then i moved on to my april prayer book and i did oh i was going to show that i did keep some additional pieces that i oops that i didn't end up using some pieces of maps that i didn't end up using i like to put make the parking pass hang tags into little additional pieces so this one i put some things on the back of but then they didn't fit they couldn't fit into my pocket and so i'm like well maybe i'll use this for something else maybe i won't maybe they'll just go tucked in the back but that's what i mean about those pieces there's things you can use everywhere for your prayer book whether it's a parking pass or part of a map or part of a brochure or a tourist book that you pull a picture out of there's stuff everywhere and i really didn't need to bring very much of my own familiar materials with me i could use what i found so my april book it's only this 15th right now my april book is getting really hefty already and that's because i've been putting a lot of trip materials in so i'll do a separate flip through of the april book later when i finished it i just want to focus on the process of trip trip journaling right now so this day we went to the american revolution museum at yorktown i had the map for the back cut out some pieces of things this was one of those ones i did late at night and just you know got done what i could do they had an embossing station with a seal in the museum and so i embossed the map and then made sure to cut out the part that had the embossing piece on it and this is also based on like yorktown settlement stuff and this from the um visitor center brochures tanner made a little note and rolled it up so i put it in there back to the governor's palace at williamsburg for a tour and then we moved on to a place near the shenandoah valley and in that little opening center of the resort or the lobby of the resort they have these little teeny tiny menus like these little from different places within about you know 40 miles or so and i just thought they were so cute little tiny menus that i snagged them and put in my book and then i didn't even glue anything into them i just used them for fun little editions i did it with this one it said feast i thought that was fun these are chicken feathers we went on a trail ride and uh there was chickens and so there's chicken feathers there my daughter drew that little picture and i cut it out she had thrown it away but i found it and cut it out and uh i picked up those chicken feathers and my kids were all like mom ew what are you getting those little chicken feathers for and i'm like i'm putting them in my book that's what i'm doing and then we drove to dc and went to it's still cherry blossom season there and i got some cherry blossom feather uh cherry blossom feathers cherry blossom petals and a little tiny piece of a cherry blossom from one of the trees by the washington monument and then i picked up this duck feather by the lincoln memorial and this one we were exhausted i actually felt like i was possibly slightly ill when i got back from being here from the kind of the overload this is where we parked at the ronald reagan building and so i made they gave you a little reminder card to know where you parked and so i made that into a little tag but basically i did not have the energy to do anything else other than this we went to we walked 17 miles that day we went to the museum of natural history with the smithsonian museum of natural history went to the smithsonian museum of american history we went to the washington monument we looked at the white house you know as we were passing by we looked at the capital as we were passing by we walked to the lincoln memorial passed the world war ii memorial and passed the vietnam memorial all in the same day and it was pretty intense and so basically i stuck my museum guide down to the page and was like that's what i got today and then inside i glued down the net so this is the visitor guide to the american history museum and this one was the one for the natural history museum and i glued it in in such a way that it can still be opened up which is pretty fun and so i but that was it i was like i can't i thought about cutting this apart more i thought about doing something more already with it and i just did not have it in me and so it was what it it was and then the next day was the actually the day we did the trail ride and um oops i've got a buddy here and i found some goose feathers another little menu uh-oh my little buddy is making this complicated then we drove back to dc and went to the national zoo where we could it was raining that day and it was absolutely amazing we had the greatest time at the zoo in the rain there was almost nobody there we got a long time to look at the pandas which is what elena who loves pandas had really wanted to do and again then i just stuck the brochure down i was like i'm calling it a day it's great then we went to shenandoah national park there's a part of the appalachian trail that runs through there and then they have stamps for your passport for people who visit national parks and get the passport i don't know why i've never done that i've been to lots of national parks i don't have the passport it's kind of too late almost to go backwards to do it so i stamped the stamp in my book instead and then this was from their brochure a walk in foggy woods is magical yes it is and then i actually stamped these first the page was blank and then when i went to glue the map down i cut a door so you could still see the stamp for it like i said my pages let's keep my page is pretty simple this time but the key card holders for your hotel room keys teeny tiny shelves from virginia beach this is the map from the place we were leaving and the key card holder and so i put a tarot card in there and a note and feathers and then we got to virginia beach had some ice cream i kept a little stick uh we saw this cool neptune statue and so i found a visitor guide that had him on it and cut him off made another circle of shells that's why my book is getting so fat it's cause i have stuff like shells in it this time around and ice cream sticks but this was a fun page to do when i had time i would do the page in the morning or in the afternoon but a lot of times i ended up doing them at night i even found moon snail eyes that i went ahead and stuck in another reason why my page is so fat because that's practically a full shell and then this was from a wok that we went on and i found some maple seeds these are these have extremely tiny embryonic welt shells and then we found a welk egg casing that was all dried out non-viable and we went ahead and opened up one of the eggs and there was the teeniest tiniest little elk shells you could possibly imagine in there they actually get to be 16 inches long in adulthood but these are just you know millimeters long and so their eggs are in there and then we went to back bay national wildlife refuge and then we you had to pay you it was like an honor system you pay and put the money in a little envelope and so i cut in half i put the money in a different envelope and i cut in half the envelope and made myself a little pocket out of the envelope the map in the back and then we this is the page i did after flying home again with the keycard holder this one with a little tag inside that i made so i wanted to make a separate video to kind of talk about the trip journal trip journaling and prayer book practice while on a trip because i feel like the content and the how i do it is different so sometimes i would type poems in my phone first and later transcribe them which when i'm at home i always write first and then transcribe into text this i did the opposite where i'd sometimes type it in notes while we were in the car and then i would transcribe it onto the page later and so that's something that i really noticed and i really wanted to mention before i close this video is that continuing this practice to me even while traveling even in the car and the way to the airport even on the airplane even you know i wrote a poem while i was walking in the airport to me like some people might consider that you know why don't you just cut yourself some slack you didn't have to do the pages i kept coming back to that i've done this for 460 days in a row i'm not going to quit now you know and there's something that feels really good about not quitting and so part of me is like is that just like kind of an addictive type of behavior et cetera et cetera and it's like no there's a there is a power a deep power in the continuing to show up even if you're on the airplane even if you're at jamestown and it's it's a it's a it kind of makes a circle and that you show up and the goddess shows up too and it's a self-fulfilling kind of cycle in that you this spirituality pervades your entire life your entire existence your vows are sacred enough that you will keep them you will hold them wholly you will hold them in violet and the goddess will show up and you will show up and you show up again and again and again and she shows up again and again and again and it like broadens your awareness so continuing to keep up the practice like reinforced for me that there's magic everywhere that the goddess is everywhere and it brought me such like i felt so good about continuing my practice and keeping up my promise even while far away from home and i think there's a lot of power and magic there and you don't have to you could i could have let it go and set it aside and i wouldn't have failed it wouldn't have been bad of me to do that but there was great it felt like almost brave to keep it going in the car on the way to the airport so loved it and thank you for watching bye