So many thoughts, feelings, words, images, deadlines, desires, worries, daydreams, and to-do’s are tumbling around inside me this morning. My inner state reminds me of this old image:
On a black-and-white TV screen, the camera focuses on a huge plexiglass globe. Inside it are small numbered balls lying in a heap. When the host of the show turns the crank on the globe, it spins, slowly, then faster and faster. At first the balls just bubble up, but soon they are zinging and ricocheting off the walls of the round container. This is what discombobulated looks like, I realize now. It’s also the way my brain feels this morning!
I know one reason why: When I reach immediately for my phone right after I wake up, it plunges me into a torrent of discombobulating news, a stream of words and images on the screen. It cramps my spirit and drowns out my imagination. It makes me feel sick.
I’ve got to unhook myself from scrolling for minutes or hours at a time. No matter whether I’m looking for news, social connection, education, entertainment, or sheer distraction, the scrolling deadens me. Especially in the morning, I need the space to imagine what I want this day to be.
So this week I am returning to a spiritual practice that has changed my life before. Every morning, I get up, make the decaf, feed the cat, and then jump back into bed—and I journal. From The Artist’s Way, I used to call this practice Morning Pages. This time I’m using The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, which includes 100 very short essays and corresponding prompts, written by awesome people, collected and introduced by Suleika Jaouad. I’m committing to writing every morning for 112 days—an essay a day, counting Suleika’s own contributions.
Now I wake excited! I’m giving my soul, my imagination, this time! It doesn’t matter what I read or write, whether I follow the prompt or not. What matters is that I have cleared space for my mind and heart to unfurl. I’ve made time to feel my hand move across the page, leaving a trail of ink. Already I know I am on a path to freedom. Already I feel more love for life
and for my part in it.
If, even after my writing, I fall back into my phone—as I did this morning—I feel the joy dim and the discombobulation return. Screens and social media are designed to ensnare us, to disconnect us from our deepest selves and a full experience of life. I don’t want them to own me. I want to keep turning toward freedom!
I choose a summer’s worth of days to settle this habit into my bones. Tell me, dear ones, how will you imagine yourself toward freedom this summer—and how shall we imagine together?
~Rev. Nancy Palmer Jones
*With this reflection from Rev. Nancy, Words of Wisdom? will be taking a summer break. We invite you to search back through the reflections of this year or of the past 12 years. We will return posting new reflections on Labor Day, September 1, 2025.
