Antelope Island State Park is a new park for me. It is the largest of a few islands within The Great Salt Lake, in the State of Utah where I live. I’ve been exploring lately. Needing and wanting to feel big skies, like the one above that looks north from Buffalo Point. Big skies are what I often go to in times of big change — to help me feel and to help find clarity.
A big change playing out for me now is in my primary work partner. For those reading, you know that Quanita Roberson and I have been up to a lot together over the last seven years. I’m proud and grateful for the work that we have done and for the guiding that we have been able to offer to each other and to those that have come along as participants and clients and fellow learners. I mostly wish to bow to such a good period of life.
This primary partnership will rest now. Changes are happening — some programs continuing in different directions. Some not continuing. Sorting is a part of it all. Programs and feelings that need some time. And then there is newness too. Openings that bring creative energy and some long-awaited desires to the forefront.
I wish well for all of the configurations. And as has become one of my most helpful orientations, well for the configurations of the inner and the outer, and for the configurations of “the now” and of the longer arc. Individually, and in community.
Poetry is what I often turn to for clarity and inspiration. Today, it is a blessing from John O’Donohue from his Book of Blessings. May it be so, all around.
For a New Beginning
John O’Donohue
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 home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
