A Clock In A Thunderstorm
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Begin

4/3/2018

2 Comments

 
Picture

For a New Beginning

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 grow 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 grey 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 plenitude 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 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.

​                                                       - John O'Donohue
 

​
New beginnings are a recurring theme in most of our lives. I’d had my last blog since 2009, beginning it as a way to catch hold of the things that were held in my memory with the most fragile of threads following a neurological illness. It had pieced me back together and become a treasured repository of words, emotions and pictures. When my lovely webmaster contacted me to say that it had been accidently lost, I mourned for every whispering filament cut swiftly  from its moorings and left to drift, but I have a soul-deep thankfulness for all that site gave me, the lessons I learned, the contacts I made and the wonderful inspirations, encouragements and care I received from so many.

This isn’t a starting over. Starting over implies attempting to erase the past or part of it. I wouldn’t be a happier, healthier, more healed person if that lost blog had not happened. I wouldn’t be a happier, healthier, more healed person without the stumbling mistakes I made along the way. My illness taught me so many wonderful things – and continues to do so – and so many of those lessons came through that blog. It did much of the work of fighting for and finding my recovery.  It is only when we  own all the parts of our story; the errors, the heartbreaks, the struggles  and the joys  that we become the growing, the always healing, best version of ourselves.  I honour the fact that that blog came into being and the contribution it made to who I am today, and I relinquish it with grace and joy.


This is simply the next step; the beginning of the new journey.

Just as a toddler begins to walk, stumbles and gets up again, putting one foot in front of the other and choosing the next best step, each of those tiny expeditions  making his legs grow stronger and his confidence grow, I’m making my next step; a new  blog that isn’t re-setting the start button, but that is beginning right now in the place I find myself today.

I expect it will still have a mix of the art, the theatre and the books that are intrinsically woven into the fibre of my being, but where else this fresh, still dewy, adventure is going to lead me is a joy yet to be discovered.

​
The birds, they sang
At the break of day
Start again, I heard them say
Don't dwell on what has passed away
Or what is yet to be.
​
​- Leonard Cohen.


2 Comments
Bob Brague link
10/3/2018 14:59:15

How wonderful, Elizabeth, that you have started blogging again! And how probably less than wonderful that I have managed to be the one who leaves the first comment on your new endeavor (I'm joking, of course). March 4th was an historically significant date earlier in American history. The inauguration of every president from John Adams through Herbert Hoover (except for those who were sitting vice-presidents and became president upon the death of the president) was held on March 4th. So it is a fitting date for your new endeavour to have its public unveiling.

(In the interest of accuracy and completeness, I cannot help but tell you that George Washington, our first president, was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, and every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 has been inaugurated on January 20, weather permitting).

I wish you well and only the best. As they say in the theatre, break a leg!

Reply
Elizabeth
10/3/2018 23:12:47

Bob, I'm so glad that you've found me; it is an honour and privilege to have you as my first commentator, and very fitting that someone who has been such an inspiration since my first blogging journey began should accompany me on this one too. Thank you.

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    This part of my site isn't about me at all.

    It is about watching, observing and reading the work of others. Those who know what they are about, who have honed their crafts over many years and for whom I have the
    greatest respect and admiration.


    I have learned, and continue to learn, so much from each show watched, each book read, each art work discovered and each person encountered, and I am humbled by their generosity of spirit in giving so much.
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