One Little Word for 2013: Possibility

I have seen several exercises for starting a new year on my friends’ FaceBook pages and blogs this week.

❧ A list of what you want to do more of and what you want to do less of.
❧ What you do on New Year’s Day sets the tone for the year; choose wisely.
❧ Check in with your map (have a map!).
❧ A list of what brought happiness and what brought disappointment or sorrow in the year past.
❧ Choose a word for the new year; and, if you had one, review how your word in the old year informed your living.
❧ Set intentions, intentionally. Create your new year.

I have done, or am doing, all of them. They seem more helpful for creating intentional living than random "resolutions." I hope looking back isn’t restricted to December 31 and looking forward doesn’t have to be completed on January 1. If it does, I’m behind. The way I see it, the first half of 2013, for me, needs to be spent in this way. It is the second half of my gap year. Time to assess life past and dream life future into being.

On New Year’s Day, I didn’t know it was the day to set the tone––to touch on, in one day, all the things I wanted more of in my life. Still, I wrote a poem that I liked, I went for a walk up the snowy road, I went to a two-hour yoga workshop with my sisters, I read, I tried to be nice. And at the very end of the year I had gone exploring into new places in the mountains. Not bad for not being intentional.

My word for 2012 was Venture. It was a little bit of a cheat, because I already knew I was going to sell my house and move across the country. I even knew in my heart of hearts that I was going to drive with my cat in an old car (though I was still considering options). That right there had pretty tremendous potential for a big adventure. (And just as an aside, it turned out to be the second best time I ever had in my life; and the other best was also spent driving cross-country). But in choosing the word, I explored many ways to venture into the new and unknown. It was a perfect word. It gave me courage to keep moving forward through the fear and doubt.

In the yoga workshop on Tuesday, I got my word for the new year: Possibility. The future is before me, and the possibilities are wide open. They will not be the last choices for where I live and what I do with my living. But they are the next, and I want to choose carefully. Also at yoga, after we considered in two breaks from asanas who we are and if the manifestation of ourselves is in alignment with our deepest purpose, the teacher said one of those things you have heard before but suddenly hear again for the first time: “You are already the person you want to be.” She is in there, I just have to let her out. As I told my sisters, I only need to get out of my way.

After dropping my sister off at SeaTac on Thursday, I stopped at Tacoma Mall. The day was crystal clear––Mt. Rainier sharply silhouetted against the cerulean sky in the east, the snowy Olympics glistening in the sun  to the west, acting out the gloriosity of the PNW. I had planned to drive to Steilacoom, a historic town on Chambers Bay that my local sister had heard might be a possible fine place to live some day. The western state psychiatric hospital is close by, too. I might need to check in there. I came out of the mall and headed back to I-5. I knew there had to be a closer way than the way I knew, which entailed circling the mall; how hard could it be? I got lost. I finally turned on GPS Phoebe who got me there.

To get to Steilacoom I had to go south and then back north, past miles of razor wire and camouflage of Fort Lewis/ McChord AFB, then more miles of soaring stately fir trees that lined the road and tickled the blue sky; then down the hillside above the Puget Sound inlet that sparkled behind the ferry terminal in front of the stupendously spectacular Olympic mountains' backdrop. Not much of a town, I can remove it from my Possibility list for living in; but that is not the story.

I thought I would let Phoebe lead me out, maybe there was a better, or at least different, route than the back yard of the military base. Like the wisepeople of old, I was open to returning home by another way. Where she took me was ridiculous. I kept saying, “Really, Phoebe?” I even saw the sign to I-5; but I was curious, so I went with Phoebe, heading farther and farther north when my destination was south. I finally smacked my hand against my forehead in realization that she was following my first “get me out of here” request. The one that started at Tacoma Mall. She was taking me through Lakewood (the biggest, ugliest strip city I ever saw; and where the mental institution actually is––of course it wouldn’t be in a healing environment like Chambers Bay), back to the mall and then to I-5, instead of starting from where I was. I had failed to put a new search. I had listened to another's voice instead of reading the road signs in front of me.

So now I am wondering: what are the possibilities if I start this year from where I am right now? A fresh start doesn’t have to mean forgetting who and where I have been, but it is so easy to get stuck there. “I can’t [fill in the blank] because [fill in the excuse].” If I think about that, the excuse always circles back to who I have been in the past. Who and what can I be starting right here and now? I can put in a new search.

It seems overwhelming to have the whole rest of my life spread out in front of me with the only real restrictions being my own fear and self-doubt. But in yoga a couple of weeks ago, Mo led us through asanas by breathing into release then exhaling into a little bit deeper place. “Micro movements achieve micro adjustments,” she said. Micro adjustments add up to significant change. That awakening was reenforced on NPR the day after New Year’s when a caller into the program I was listening to extolled the idea of making “one degree of change.” One degree, and then one more, that’s double the change. Two degrees is just that easy.

I pulled up to the coffee shop today, thinking about small steps and the map I sort of drew for myself a year ago, and returned to one of things I had wanted to do, just for the fun of it: learn how to be a barista. Never know when that might be a useful skill here in the land of all things coffee. Why haven’t I done it? All I have to do is ask someone if they would teach me, and offer something in return. As friend Amelia said in her recent blog post, “My map! I had forgotten to check my map.”

Possibility is achieved in small steps forward, not giant leaps that might land you in a crater out of which you will have to slowly extricate yourself. But first, the map. I don’t have to know the whole route, I don’t have to know the exact roads. But let the exploration begin. Where do I want the next stop to be? What do I want to pack from my past into my suitcase? What do I want to give to a thrift shop, or bury in the landfill? What new clothes do I want to pack? And is my map in my front pocket where I can check it easily?

A dear friend sent this Blessing for Epiphany by Jan Richardson. I am studying.

The Map You Make Yourself



You have looked

at so many doors

with longing,

wondering if your life

lay on the other side.



For today,

choose the door

that opens

to the inside.



Travel the most ancient way

of all:

the path that leads you

to the center

of your life.



No map

but the one

you make yourself.



No provision

but what you already carry

and the grace that comes

to those who walk

the pilgrim’s way.



Speak this blessing

as you set out

and watch how

your rhythm slows,

the cadence of the road

drawing you into the pace

that is your own.



Eat when hungry.

Rest when tired.

Listen to your dreaming.

Welcome detours

as doors deeper in.



Pray for protection.

Ask for the guidance you need.

Offer gladness

for the gifts that come

and then

let them go.



Do not expect

to return

by the same road.

Home is always

by another way

and you will know it

not by the light

that waits for you



but by the star

that blazes inside you

telling you

where you are

is holy

and you are welcome

here.

Venturing Boldly: A Love Story

I have not fully understood the impact, if any, of the Occupy movement, but I admire the passion of those who believe it is a way for their voice to be heard. I pass the Occupy Raleigh island encampment on Hillsborough Street this week, as I have twice every weekday through the fall and the winter and the spring, and observe that they have folded their tents that provided shelter, piled up the remaining wood crates that fueled their fires against the cold over the winter, abandoned the cut logs they sat around the fire on, locked up the port-a-potties, and gone home. I am amazed by the passion that kept them there for so many months. They ventured out of whatever places they had been holed up in, and lived out loud.

On Tuesday, North Carolina passed a constitutional amendment that states for the record that all people are not created equal; that all people do not have the right to pursue happiness−at least not in a legal sense. In short, there is only one way to be. The love and marriages some North Carolinians might have if it were allowed, would make, apparently, a mockery of those of other North Carolinians; and the majority of voters are afraid of what that might mean for their own marriages. I guess. I don’t understand that; but the passions on both sides of the issue have flowed liberally for the past many months. People who had been minding their own lives, ventured out to speak passionately for the lives of others, and what should or should not be legal under the constitution. And that speaking out, that dialogue−even when it sounds more like the rant of crazy people−is what changes the world; eventually for the better, but not today. Today we are a little bit worse off, but love and justice will prevail. It just takes such a long time.

For the past five years, my passion has been my garden. I have dug into the depths of the earth. I have pulled weeds and pruned the overgrowth. I have rescued plants buried under ivy and returned them to the light. I have hauled bricks and flagstone and stones, many of which I also found buried, relicts of a previous life. I have planted new life. I have watched things grow; and I have watched some die, either because their time had come or because they didn’t receive the nutrients they needed to thrive. I have taken pictures and seen in the photos on my computer what was not evident to the naked eye. I have discovered the joy of watching and waiting. I have hurt, and I have healed with the garden’s help. I have written about my garden and the lessons learned from it, and in that I have uncovered new passion in myself. In writing, I begin to find out what I know, and give it a voice. I have shared my garden and my home with friends. I have loved passionately.

When I bought my house, and its overgrown gardens, I had no idea of the venture I was about to embark on. I wasn’t looking to become a gardener. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. In fact, I believe had I gone looking for some particular place, I never would have found this place. It found me. And now I find myself ready for a new venture. But this time I am going to a particular place. Home. Though it has been 35 years since I left the Pacific Northwest, it has never ceased to be the place I love with unequaled passion. The Northwest is the love story of my life and it is calling me home.

I have known for many months this time was coming, and I was not ready until now to write here about it. And it still feels like a bold venture to say it out loud. It makes it real. Remember my One Little Word from the beginning of the year? “Venture.” My word is venture. So, in 2-½ weeks I will leave my home and garden. After some time with dear friend Laura, Smudge the Cat and I will leave Raleigh on June 24 and head into a bold new venture.

Leaving friends, who have made a valued place for me in their lives, is the hardest part. There will be another home; there will be another garden. Yes, there will be other friends. But friends are not replaced; only added to. When one leaves a place, they leave also that which has been their heart. I can’t even talk about that yet. There is much that I will miss about North Carolina, and there is much that I won’t. I will save both for another post.

Pico Iyer said, “I left one kind of home to find another, to discover what resided in me and where I resided most fully.” My friend, Charly, who returned to her native Colorado a few years ago, said, “I returned to who I am and more.” I think I was most fully alive in Washington, with its “verdant forests green, caressed by silvery stream,” (the Washington State song); and of course, its snow-capped mountains. Washington is what the color green smells like. Blue comes into its fullness in the sky and water there. But I was barely an adult when I left. I am different now. The venture, what I look forward to, is rediscovering−or perhaps discovering for the first time−who I am and can be in my heart home.

Venturing boldly. Finding what you are passionate about and living it. Isn’t that what it means to fully be alive? Isn’t that what it means to love?

don’t ask yourself what the
world needs; ask yourself
what makes you come alive.
and then go and do that.
because what the world
needs is people who have
come alive.
    -howard thurman