I am participating in Quest2015, brainchild of Jeffrey Davis of Tracking Wonder, a space where a wild bunch of glorious people are setting off to envision 2015 amidst visionary entrepreneurs, scientists, thought leaders, artists, writers, teachers and adventurers. This post is my response to the first (and a bit of the second) prompt. Yes, you may still join the adventure. Follow the links and be filled with wonder, awe and more grandness than you know right now.
Today's visionary is Pam Houston, who changes lives at UC Davis not far from where I went to college at University of the Pacific. She guided us in to list times our heart has leaped in the past day or week or month and to continue to catalog our heart leaps. She then asked us to live and write our way into this question:
How can I arrange my life to get more heart leaps in it?
Below is my response:
Yesterday I spent the day with my new friend and Couchsurfing host, Judy, driving around Bucks County, Pennsylvania as the Nor'easter magically swooped around us and we galavanted around country roads, laughing, telling stories and taking pictures.
The geography is so different than my Central California experience of dry, drought stricken valley my heart was leaping all over the place.
"Stop the car, please, I need to..." and out the door I would pop with my camera clicking.
Judy was delighted by my delight. I was positively overwhelmed by the colors and textures and history- it is decidedly winter here but after seeing baked browns everywhere in my California home to the colors of the beech and the greens on the moss and the grasses and the pine trees, my heart just wouldn't stop.
I am one of those "highly practiced heart leapers" who consciously chooses a life of heart leaps and jumps and openings and willingly wears white into even in what is perceived as the most dangerous battlefields. What happens as a result is there are times I get hurt, badly, but even then - my heart stubbornly pushes her way further open, deeper and wider.
My life goes beyond labels.
I don't distinguish heart leaping due to bliss and heart leaping due to what some would call tragic life experience because I know in the end with deliberate action and passionate detachment everything and yes, everything will be just fine.
Last night I went through some turbulence with my daughter who was three-thousand miles away. She was hurting, I couldn't reach her, I felt more than a wee bit panicked and selfish and scared and isolated and worried. Today I am looking forward to going home and being with her amidst the rest of what might look like a chaotic at times life. My heart leaps in the chaos. My heart leaps in holding my daughter close even and especially from a distance.
It is a chaotic life much of the time, but I leave space open for the heart leaping always whether it be from the sound of rain on the roof after no rain on the roof for so long or the smells I encounter on my early morning walk or the discovery of a "new" cousin on facebook who seems to engage with life in a similar way as I do. My heart leaps include sitting in a fast food restaurant writing poetry and chatting up a homeless woman coping with mental illness and a man who is very concerned I am taking his photo when I'm actually taking a selfie and he and I end up swapping photo stories.
My heart leaps in silence with friends, in labyrinth walking be it a breathraking environment like in Los Osos or a "much more ordinary" one like in my home in Bakersfield.
My heart leaps in listening to another soul's grief story or special needs child story or disengagement story or coming to terms with reality story or birth story or adoption story or sitting by the campfire story.
My task in creating life work that hums in 2015 is to integrate heart leaping into it all. Into it ALL. Not classifying "worthy of leaping" but to know my heart may leap in the grocery store and it may leap while standing next to a Giant Sequoia.
My heart will and does leap in Bakersfield and in Bucks County.
My heart will and does leap in fast food restaurants, on hikes and sitting in the middle of any river.
My heart will and does leap in memory, in presence and in visionary work.
I am not one to contain my heart. I open my arms to her power and request she continue to guide me, to push me, to remind me of her presence and leaping - with my entire being filled with wonder - is always where the answers live for my continued Quest in 2015 in my creative life work.
It feels so good, my heart is leaping even now!
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming Fall and Winter, 2014 and beyond. 
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© 2014
Sit quietly and ask yourself, what in the last day or week or month has made your heart leap up? Not what should, or might or always had, but what did. Make that list. Be honest, even if it surprises you. Keep the list with you this month. Add to it when it happens. Train yourself to notice. Then ask your self today, how can I arrange my life to get more of those heart leaps in it? - See more at: http://trackingwonder.com/quest-2015/community/#sthash.buQ053Ss.dpuf
