One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver, The Journey
One day I just knew, months, or maybe years, of a lingering dissatisfaction, or not enoughness, or not quite the shape of your soul. You think about just getting in the car and leaving. leaving behind everything, work, love, friends, dreams, home, safety, certainty.
And I laid there, on the Earth, under the Juniper tree, weeping. Grieving for what is slipping through my fingers in this life journey. Not because my heart is broken, it is opened. Perhaps that’s even more frightening. Because I can’t conceive, with this personality/mind/ego, what lies beyond what I had spent a lifetime dreaming up, hoping for, working hard for.
But somehow there’s nothing more that I’d like than to watch it all sort of fade into a dreamy twilight, and find myself, only myself.
no shoulds. no wants. no whos. no rules.
Vision Quest.
because a vision, even as an unformed seed,
asks for a quest.
for a commitment.
for a stripping away.
for the space to crack open not just my heart,
but my soul.
And I see how every step of every journey in every year, every heartbreak, every transplanting across the country, every loss of community, every whispering desire from childhood, unlived, unrecognized, unheeded.
Forgotten
in this race to create a life worth living,
to a personality, but not my soul essence
Is leading me down this road.
Quest.
It only took me 15 yrs to say, “yes.”
And yes, means, I’m terrified.
Mostly of the lions.
18 pages of ceremony, journal work, journeys, reading.
3 months to strip away the wasted time and energy drain.
To sit in the winter darkness, under the stars, and pray.
Waiting for that mountain to speak, for that tree to sing, for that stone to whistle, for that raven to say my name.
Sacred Wildness 