The evolution of my given word

It has been seven weeks since I last emptied my words here. Wow.

However, contrary to past excuses for not writing, my latest sabbatical from this column had nothing to do with being unhappy. I am, in fact, in a most content and joyful life space, and more so in an honest and truthful vein, than I have been in for some years. That’s what happens when I listen to my intuition.

On most mornings I still make time for me. I pour a cup of coffee, sit in my favorite chair, write in my diary, and read a daily reflection from “The Book of Awakening” by Mark Nepo, and from the books of my go-to “Melody” on how to let go. 

I’ve also fallen with gratitude upon two more wise works – “Becoming Wise,” by Krista Tippett and the masterpiece, “Embers,” by Richard Wagamese, the extraordinary and gifted Ojibwe writer whose life and works I discovered on March 10^th, 2017—the day he died.

To quote Mr. Wagamese, and I do concur, “Mornings have become my table.”

I always have been in love with the sunrise. To see it, to involve myself in its renewable and unconditional resource each morning is the epitome of “sucking the marrow” out of my life and I only have so many days afforded to me to do so. By late June I will be able to see the sunrise at 4:30 a.m.

In mid-2012 I admittedly wrote that I lived a very safe existence—“one that’s calculated and organized so that I turn as many of the knobs on the horizontal and vertical as possible.”

It was the control freak in me. I’m much better now than I was five years ago at stepping outside the box, but at times I’m still a subtle commander, a recovering control junkie.

But man, when I can let go, I feel like Dorothy in the “Land of Oz,” and I feel the real “Wow” of life out there, and I hear the mockingbird sing.

I know how words work. I know how to put them together to get my point across in this space but they fail me now as I scrape my brain dictionary for the right “write” ones that will paint a picture of how my life has opened up to reveal the silver linings born of playbooks I didn’t choose, fought against, fell into, lived through, learned and have grown from.

Mark Nepo writes, “Perhaps the secret to growing from our wounds is to live close to the earth, to live without our hearts and minds and bellies always in touch—both inside and out—with that which is larger than we are.

Perhaps, when cut in two, it is a life of humility, of risking to be at one with the soil of our experience, that allows us to heal into something entirely new.”

The morning I left for Wales in May 2012, I wrote in my diary, “I want more than what I can get by wishing. I have so much life to live, so many opportunities ahead of me to experience.

I don’t think I could have written myself a better gift of intention than I did that day. This I know for sure.