Begin and Begin Again

This is my mantra for 2010. Begin; Begin Again. So many new beginnings for this year. The last evening of the year, at sunset, I went for a walk. I so needed the fresh cold air and repetitive, meditative movement of the familiar path from my own door through the pretty little neighborhoods that surround me and back again to my home. We live in a pretty place..not the drama of my beloved Sangre de Christos or the hard edged glitz of the Vegas Strip; not the familiar nascent song of the Atlantic Ocean that sang me to life or the mystery of the forests or any of the other worlds I have lived in ...a pretty neighborhood with well kept homes on well kept streets. The blessing is you don't have to think much about where you are putting your feet as you walk...no waves or cactus or rattlesnakes...just sidewalk..so your mind is free to wander where it will in time and space.

Sunset. The last day of the year. The last light of a decade. I mentally said good-by to people, places, even my own little mindsets, marveling at how thoughts and opinions had developed and either helped or hindered the path I walked this decade. I released as much as I could, feeling lighter with each step, growing wings with each whispered word. My spine even itched slightly as if those wings wanted to burst forth, but it wasn't just wings, there were antennae as well that began to reach out for that which is now, for the blessings of the present place, this strange Middle Earth, with its gift of snow and Spring and Autumn. this place of Sacred Spaces and Angel Folk; this time of growing awareness and calm. As yet unimagined blessings glowing like this setting sun.

Fear has choked my sleep several nights. Fear of the changes this night of the fullest of full moons brings. My marriage, my career,my daily path through life are all changing this year, this decade. This fear, is only change and I, who so honors change, am overwhelmed by too full a plate. I will lose a parent. I will grow a business. I will adopt a life with less of what was previously there and more of something else. It doesn't really sound so bad as a written sentence.

So, any other year, I would write a long list of goals, specific in dates and dollar amounts and there may yet be an exercise in that sort of organized thought. My goal for 2010 is my mantra. Begin and Begin Again. On my walk that last night of a decade, the last night of the year, I said good-by to my 40's and thought about how I had turned 50 and would see 60 in this next decade. When I am feeling overwhelmed I often think I am too old for all this nonsense, too old to begin all over again for beginning is just so BIG, but as I watched the soft edged orange ball of the sun disappear below the horizon, I gave thanks to God that I could, in fact, begin and begin again.