Showing posts with label Pilgrim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pilgrim. Show all posts

Friday, January 1, 2016

New Year's Day 2016


Once again, New Year's Day has come around. The wheel of the year turns. Celebrations abound.

My New Year's Days over the past several years have been spent looking back in order to move forward. In truth, I've done this most of my life, in various moments of awareness.

As 2016 begins, I sit and write. It's my passion. I feel more vital when I pour my life, my heart, my words onto the page. As my words flow, it's as though my heartbeats even out and I am content within.

Reflections:
Last year began with a ceremony of acceptance of my own personal power in the world. One thread that's woven throughout last year's tapestry is awareness. All of my past days have led me to this one. How often do I get the opportunity to recall this? How often do I take that opportunity in a good way?
Spring brought with it a new camera and explorations of my photographic eye. I played with pictures, took workshops, progressed closer to expressing myself as a photographer. How incredible to be blessed with beauty all around and have a way to capture some of it and share it!
Summer found me spending three weeks wandering Maine, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia with one of my dearest friends. Time flowed and paused and rushed throughout those days and weeks. We found a pace together. I relaxed into the new and familiar before returning to work. What an amazing, incredible blessing of time and presence!
Fall returned me to work, renewed and refreshed. New plans formed and played themselves out. New roles and new players blossomed into form. Days and weeks slipped quickly, quietly, noisily and freely by. It's wonderful to have a career that expands my world.
As the holidays approached, more changes arose. One who spent numerous holidays with me, could not this year. So I traveled again, spending time in a new place and finding peace there. Then returning home to finish the year with family and friends there. My personal circle often seems small in comparison to that of others, but it is the right and most beautiful size for me.

Resolutions:
Ah. I don't trust that process of resolution-making and eventual resolution-breaking. Simple plans and hopes for the coming year include growing ever healthier by continuing to eat better and exercising more consistently; reading more and writing more; continuing to explore myself as a photographer, traveler, pilgrim. With luck and blessings, those things will bloom as the Light continues to return.

What about you? How do you pass from the old year to the new? What shows up when you check the year's rear view mirror? Where are you heading in the coming year? What do you want to increase in your life? to decrease? May beauty and joy bubble over you this New Year's Day.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Wednesday #1





Traveller, your footprints
Are the path and nothing more;
Traveller, there is no path,
The path is made by walking.
~ Antonio Machado, Traveller, There is No Path




During this season, more than at almost any other time of year, I feel the traveller, the pilgrim within me, expressing herself more and more. Maybe it's the Spring with its new buds and greenery and lambing. Maybe it's the flow of sap once again after the sluggishness of winter. maybe it's the stretching of the limbs after hibernation. For whatever reason, my pull during this season is to move.

"The path is made by walking." Have you ever walked in a forest or on a hillside or along a road and noticed a path heading off in some unknown direction? Maybe one that was barely noticeable? What did you think? Were you drawn to explore it, to investigate where it led?

Many paths I trod in my life were barely visible markings on the ground. Others were covered with mist. still others were unlit by more than the stars of the night sky. The destination not always assured. Every step an adventure in trust. For each of these I am eternally grateful.