Moving in Grace

I moved from Maryland to North Carolina Monday. Today it is Wednesday and I am sitting facing out to this yard and the skyline of hills and mountains that called me here. Contented is how I feel. Vastly contented and grateful for this sense that I have come home. Almost 68 years old, I have come home. Writing this, I feel and let go a deep sigh. It is a great gift to make such a change. Although I have moved many times, I have lived for 28 years in and around Annapolis. My references and my way of navigating each and every daily task was ingrained through the places and friends I habitually met and engaged with and it was this I was giving up. I had this sense for some time that I was leaving and I allowed the thought to bubble up over time, until, it surfaced and made itself known in a very palpable way. “Wow. I am moving again. And, this time it feels like it is for good.” So, I began that crazy process of looking for a place to rent. In many states. Just following this thread or that. Until something opened here, in Black Mountain, with an invitation to spend 3 weeks house siting. With that conversation, I felt an opening – a door simply swung aside. The very fabric of my life was being rearranged yet at the same time, was coming together. I then made contact with new friends, a couple whose spiritual path so paralleled mine, it was uncanny.

“Meant to be” someone might say. I have no way of explaining this except to admit to a certain courage in letting go of the familiar and taking one last huge gambit and having faith in the process. I was trusting for sure in something I couldn’t see, but that I sensed with all my being. Some may say it was easy as I always land on my feet, but the underlying process of this unraveling – it is the willingness to throw everything down again and allow yourself to risk it all. And, that isn’t easy for the familiar can be a trap and cord binding us to the habitual. To risk the familiar is to step out of the comfort zone. Even if you think moving IS the comfort zone, my own experience is simply this; every move led up to this one. Each time I left to go to a new place, I felt more present as if each place became home. Leaving consciously, saying goodbye as I drove through old neighborhoods and thought, “I may not see this again,” was bitter sweet and mindful. And, here I am, at home again. And, yet, completely different for there is a stronger foundation of support that I have been chiseling away at, loosening the ties that bind while allowing for a greater spaciousness of being.

This is what all this moving has been for me; a path to BEING. Where I am is home. Whoever I am with is family and friend. And, I am bound through love to all those I left behind while carrying them in my heart with me. All that I own was in my car, an Elantra, and still I thought I have too much, for I need so little.

Taking risks, leaving the familiar, being honest about what scares you and going for it anyway – these are markers on the path to living authentically. I don’t think it’s easy, for if you are truly yourself, you might leave the cloister of self-consciousness and risk being foolish. I am proudly a very foolish risk taker and it was all done with the hope of learning to live in a Flow of Grace that I believed and now know, to be the very core of my being. It is the thread that really binds us – a Flow of Grace. I think of this a lot and I try to bring this to others through my work, now with Cherish Heart Center, an online sangha and spiritual home for others with me. We are all always moving. Some travel in secret ways and some on highways. Who can say? We can only marvel at the the GPS of this Flow pulling us and encouraging us as we travel to the innermost regions of Love.

May this find you happy and even and may your heart be heard as she shares her secret wishes with you. My wish is for you to be at home, now, wherever you are and to fall in love with everyone else with you.

Peace Friend, from North Carolina.