Infinite Blessings: Answering Our Community Questions.
Transforming Burdens into Shared Light.
Dearest,
When I surveyed you in the new year about what you would like to inspire and look at together, I felt this roar of connection trying to find its right expression, and after breath work one day I heard: extend blessings. More than advice, more than solutions, journal prompts, remedies, diets, exercise, we need to be heard and blessed in the place we are standing. We need to have a space where we are held by someone who understands, who can listen, and share with us in our universal human struggles and experiences. I’m hoping to field your questions, pause, and reflect, and then extend a short blessing to all us, as we stand in these very familiar places.
I want to touch on the word 'blessing', for me, a blessing is simply a moment of reprieve. Taking a break over a beignet on a soft chair, with someone you love. As one of my favourite poets and authors, John O'Donohue beautifully articulated: "A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal, and strengthen.” The greater our understanding and language, the less burden we carry and the less alienating this path becomes.
As I was reading all your comments I could hear all of the things, tasks, you were tilling in your gardens, and I know I'm listening to the most beautiful sound in the world. When someone is admitting what fruit they hope will grow, and what weather threatens their crops, I see beauty emerging from that honesty. Laying ourselves bare is energizing and revelatory. Familiar, honest, and brave. There is an urgent need for us to create sanctuaries of safety in our world, where we can embrace our true intimacy and learn from the constant unfolding of our lives. Humanity is rooted in the heart.
Thank you for being present. May you find solace and inspiration in the upcoming inquiry and and brief blessing.
love,
Sarah
Thank you ‘A’, for your inquiry.
A: “I am learning to begin again. I find myself trying to fix less and leaning Into Acceptance and Forgiveness more. I am still struggling to tether my heart and soul to the present more than my past. I can feel sometimes a glimmer of the me I have been wishing for. This me is intune with waters feeling. Fire's drive. Earth's patience. And Airs wisdom. How do we make what we are tethered to in our present more meaningful than the past trying to steal our future?”
This question makes the heart grow fond just by reading it. I see you, looking for a comfortable place to stand. The same for me. On a precipice, looking out at a vast divide in your life, you wonder where the world will lead you next, and if you must carry all of yourself, heavy and full of bones, to the next hilltop. What I have learned is that every inch of land in your body, mind, and heart is valuable. Whatever remnants of the past you still hold in your bright eyes, whatever heartache, worry, and fear you still carry inside you, are minted there like a tiny glistening forest. Shadows and bent cedar trees, dappled sun patches, damp and warm. A whole ecosystem of delights. If you clear the forest of all its trees and shadows, you'll only have fields left. Barren in many ways. In the absence of all proof of life on the body, of its history, you risk being burned by a too bright sun. The deeply rooted protect and reveal, call forth tender sprigs, shade the soft petals emerging. There are countless ways our pain has made our growth, like the carvers hand slowly whittling away the bottom of the boat. We can’t see what shape is being made of us, but if we move away from the mind that worries and wants to name, wants to put pegs and flags down in a solid ground, we can grasp life’s agenda, and lovingly hold ourselves as we encounter, yet again, the mountain in front of our heart and dreams. The paralysis, the cyclical nature of a human life. The heart coaxing the feet to keep walking. There is always the next hard thing, but this dear one, is precisely what we are built for.