The vast Pacific horizon off the coast of Maui.
As you consider the year ahead, maybe making New Year’s resolutions, maybe not, I thought I’d share a poem that’s meant a lot to me this year. I’ve read it many, many times over the course of the year as I’ve made some big changes in my life and will continue to do so as I prepare for more in the year ahead.
Change isn’t always easy. Sometimes it forms quietly, waiting until we’re really ready to leave the old behind, finally finding and settling into it’s new rhythm.
This slower, ground-up change is just as good as the resolved, tracked, and executed kind.
~
For a New Beginning by John O’Donohue
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.It watched you play with the seduction of safety,
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plentiude opening before you.Though your destination is not clear,
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk,
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
~
P.S. – This poem comes from a book I’ve really enjoyed called To Bless the Space Between Us
