For those of you who have been reading this blog you know that I am using my re-do-I-do and wedding dress as a way to have a year of spiritual exploration. The wedding dress did not go hiking this week, but I did. 
I spent the day walking empty roads...almost empty at least...and gazing at the changing colors signalling the beginning of fall. This is my favorite season. There is a quality of light that makes everything seem deeper and more possible and more freeing. Fall is my time
of new beginnings, not spring. How appropriate that we started the wedding dress journey at the end of the summer, leading into fall.
And how appropriate that I should look at ways to deepen this spiritual journey as the colors turn. How appropriate that I should want to express my free spirit in the fall on a spiritual trail. So let me re-define free spirit.
It is the ability to walk a path that others have discarded or abandoned, or rejected, or found frightening. It is not about finding rules to reject, but about acknowledging that rules are simply guideposts and recommendations. Rules tell us what the boundaries are, but not how to travel. Not how to dance down a trail full of joy over the experience of feeling the earth beneath my feet, the wind in my face, and the scent of the forest filling my mind. Being a free spirit is not about avoiding every rule, but about embracing the ones that make my life richer and more meaningful, regardless of how they appear to other people.
Even on Shabbat with my hair in a hat.
Would love to hear what your carins or markers are.
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