I’ve been hosting a bunch the last ten days. Delightful people in learning, story, and community. There’s the Wisdom Series that I co-host with Quanita Roberson — two classes on Elders and Guides as it pertains to Initiation; two classes on Surrender, also as it pertains to Initiation. There’s the Firekeeper’s Leadership Retreat cohosted with Quanita Roberson and Amy Howton at Deer Creek Lodge and Retreat Center near Columbus, Ohio (Deer Creek Reservoir pictured above).
I so often appreciate hosting people into uncovering themselves into more of the heart of what matters.
From my book of poems, Most Mornings, this poem that speaks to some of that uncovering.
Under Thicket and Vine
“Your inward being must guide you.”
This is what he spoke to me,
this sage of a man,
in a season of needed truth-telling.
Just like another when she implored me,
“Let your heart continue to guide you.”
This is the truth of it, isn’t it.
For so many of us, the needed step
is to come home to ourselves.
Sure, the journey is enlivened by the external.
The loves lost and found.
The travels here and there.
The jobs delightful and troubling.
The stimulants this and that.
In the end,
so many of us
must learn to clear away
the overgrown thicket and vines
to uncover the familiarity of our own hearts.
so much here for me …
“hosting people into uncovering themselves into more of the heart of what matters.”
So much of what I am doing in the process of house-becoming-home is uncovering “more of the heart of what matters.” It does not escape me that this uncovering of the physical home in which I live reaches into the heart of me-becoming. Sometimes it has felt like an earthquake shaking up everything I thought I knew about myself and the core of who I am. Sometimes, and more recently, it has felt like a cleansing bath, slaking off the layers of crusted tears, the accumulated grief of loss and fear that this was the best I could hope for.
So, here’s to clearing away … for one an overgrown thicket and vines, for me an overstuffed house and schedule … to uncover the beauty – and belatedness – of my own heart.
oops … that was supposed to be *belovedness*