My friend Mary and I first met in a facebook group ("Can a facebook 'friend' be a real friend?" I wondered - I know now the answer. "Hell yes"). She calls herself a health coach but I see her as equal parts "mama cooking for you in the kitchen" and "sexy temptress." The women of the group nicknamed her Queen of Scots - because she's Mary and she lives in Scotland. But she still managed to come over to New England and meet us in person twice this year. BADASS. Talk about showing up.
Most recently we were together in Maine on a beautiful retreat with 23 others from the group. We gathered together in a circle at the edge of the lake on the first afternoon and Mary read this inspiring blessing, a poem by John O'Donahue.
It moved me to my core and I thought "I want to remember that beginning."
Tonight I was struggling to decide what to write as my first post on this blog. Then I remembered that blessing, that beginning. I realize now that the moment at the lake was the beginning of this - this website, this blog, this new expression of my sacred distillation.
Here we go.
For a New Beginning
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
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 plenitude 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;
Hold 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.
— from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, by John O’Donohue