Step Up Into Your Purpose

(Photo from Bald Eagle Lake, 6/8/09: New reeds burst forth into the space of the remains of last year’s reeds.)

The school year is done today. Phew! and whoopee!

I work in a school for teens with “behavior issues” and yesterday at our awards ceremony when I was introduced as the “lead teacher,” a student called out, “Port ain’t no teacher, he be the re-enforcer.” Now the young man may have meant, “the enforcer” because my role is much like the assistant principal in most schools.

Also at the awards ceremony our featured speaker was a woman who is an HIV/AIDS awareness worker in the community here. She got involved and started a nonprofit called WUWA (Wake Up We’re Affected) when 12 family members discovered that they were HIV+ (all but one has died now) and 23 of her nieces and nephews have had one or both parents die from related causes and/or hepatitis C. Last year her husband of 30 years died.

She encouraged the teenagers to be safe this summer. “You don’t know what the person you’re having sex is carrying. You don’t know what the person you’re fighting with because they disrepected you – you don’t know what they’re carrying.”

Her main message and strategy for encouraging everyone to be safe: “Step up into your purpose.”

That phrase zinged me.

Stepping up into my purpose for the summer includes when I’m having relaxed time with my kids to step up into that; when getting some repair projects done on my house to step up into that; when playing with some internet Zen projects to step up into that; when beginning a new book to step up into that; and when sitting a couple 5-day sesshins to step up into that.

Wishing you all a wonderful stepping-up summer! Oh, I’ll be blogging right along … so stay tuned.