For a new beginning. In out of the way places of the heart, where your thoughts never think to wonder, this beginning has been quietly forming, waiting until you were ready to emerge. For a long time it has watched your desire, feeling the emptiness growing inside you. Noticing how you willed yourself on, still unable to leave what you had outgrown. It watched you play with the seduction of safety and the gray promises that sameness whispered, heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, wondered would you always live like this. Then the delight when your courage kindled and out you stepped onto new ground your eyes young again with energy and dream. A path of plentitude opening before you. Though your destination is not yet clear, you can trust the promise of this opening, unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning that is at one with your life’s desire. Awaken your spirit to adventure, holding nothing back. Learn to find ease in risk, soon you will be home in a new rhythm, for your soul senses the world that awaits you. ~ John O’Donohue, The Space Between Us
Dear Readers,
On my walk this morning, I chose to listen again to readings from John O’Donohue’s great works of poetry, spirit and landscape. John’s deep faith and philosophy emanate from his first experiences as a child growing up in Western Ireland in the landscape of the Burren.
Readers who have followed my blog over the years know that I, too, take my inspiration from the enduring spirit imbued withing each distinct landscape. For me that has always been the limestone region of East Tennessee and particularly along the Watauga River where my grandparent’s home was my spiritual center. I grew up in a military family, moving as frequently as once a year. But, every year possible, my parents brought my sisters and me back to the “Hilltop Farm” for summers or Christmas celebrations. Like John, this landscape form the warp and weft of me.
What brought me to remember John’s blessing quoted above, is the reminder that the path of plentitude is within us. We only have to awaken our imagination to it.
In this time in America …
The power of the people in a democracy lies within each citizen, each person living on this sacred landscape. We must return to our deepest convictions that a free people must act together in eternal vigilance against an evil that hates liberty, wishes to slash and burn the spirit that we hold as an educated and free people whose combined efforts and guardianship has made this nation great, not perfect, but striving always toward the values it holds as our sacred trust.
Susan Feathers 