Sunday, May 22, 2011

Outwaiting Clouds.....

Quite a lot has happened in the last few weeks. I have been at a new job for 2 weeks now, working for a freight forwarding and logistics company. Completely new for me. The first job I've ever had where I can't wear tracksuit pants to work, where I sit at a desk for 8 hours a day and where I don't work weekends. I'm slowly getting used to this though and its nice for now to be in a routine that is more stable, particularly with the little man. I'm also playing hockey again (I can't believe its been 3 and 1/2 years since I last played). Feels great to run around again and push myself, as well as having laughs with the hockey gals.

The main purpose of this post was to share some words of wisdom from Mark Nepo. In particular, I want to dedicate them to my friend Alanna, who I had the pleasure of catching up with for dinner last week. I hadn't seen her in ages and she has been through some extraordinarily difficult times since I saw her last. I hope that in some small way our time together on Thursday night helped ease her burden a little and she felt my love and support. Whilst I don't know what it feels like to lose your mother, I do know what it feels like to lose someone close to you and what it feels like to go through periods in life where it seems everything has turned upside down and nothing feels 'right'. These words resonated with me and Alanna, I hope they comfort you in some way too....


Outwaiting Clouds

The bud in half bloom outwaits the clouds

Some days I wake with a cloud around my heart, and it dulls everything except the weight I carry deep inside. Yet, just because I can't make it to the light today doesn't mean that the light has vanished. In truth, the heart, like the Earth, is continually blanketed by ever-changing atmospheres that come and go between who we are and how we live our days.
So faith, it seems, can be defined as the effort to believe in light when we're covered by clouds, and though it feels like the sun will never come again, the truth is it has never stopped burning its light. In fact, its heat and warmth is burning steadily, right now, on the far side of whatever cloud we are under.
If we could only suspend our judgement when clouded in the heart. For many skepticisms are born from conclusions drawn while unable to see, as if any kind of understanding will prevent the clouds from coming or going, again and again.
But no cloud lasts forever. The Earth and all that grows from it knows this well. So does the heart and everything that grows from it, in spite of all our very understandable pains.

(Taken from "The Book of Awakening" by Mark Nepo)

Friday, May 6, 2011

Life's wild ride....

Holy Moly - what a ride this past few months has been for me. As is the case for everyone at certain times, life throws you a curve ball and you seem to get your butt kicked. And I have sufficiently had my butt kicked, let me tell you. Its not necessarily in a bad way. Its been kicked in the way it does when you weren't anticipating certain things, happenings or feelings arising, and when they do they hit you like a steam train. The catalyst for this for me was finally stopping everything. Perhaps, somewhat naively, I thought that I would stop, create space in my life, then just happily move forward into the next phase. But if I think about everything I have been through in the last 3 or so years, its no surprise really that once I stopped, every emotion, thought or feeling that had been suppressed by the chaos of every day life bubbled to the surface. I know that this was completely necessary, so that I could work through any un-resolved issues and drop excess baggage in order to move into a better place in my life. But knowing that hasn't made it any easier. Its very humbling though to go through these phases, where everything is turned upside down and where you feel as though you are strapped into an out of control ride. All you can do is close your eyes and hold on, trusting that the end of this ride or phase will come (even though in your darkest moments you can't fathom that it ever will).

In the short term, I could have just run away from the pain or feelings (and believe me there were many times when I wanted to). But I knew that they would simply re-surface later and that no matter how hard it was, I needed to deal with what was in front of me. As Mark Nepo says in his Book of Awakening, 'It seems that whatever the door, whatever our fear - be it love or truth or even the prospect of death - we all have this choice, again and again: avoiding that part of our house or opening the door and finding out more about ourselves by waiting until what is dark becomes seeable.'

Whilst I still have a lot of work to do in clearing out the old ways of being and thinking that no longer serve me, I do at least feel like the wild ride is slowing down somewhat. Its still dark but I'm catching more and more glimmers of light and can see that what is dark will become seeable.......