“Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved when we place profound trust in the act of beginning. Risk might be our greatest ally. To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening. There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth that was not rewarded a thousand times over.”
~ John O’Donohue
This weekend is my second to last weekend in San Diego before leaving for Northern Ireland to live for a year as an intern with the Corrymeela Community, Northern Ireland’s oldest center for peace and reconciliation. The past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying nourishing time with friends, opportunities to connect and say goodbye for now. In addition to seeing people before leaving, I am also wanting to visit significant places. Humans are place-based creatures, though modern society all too often draws us away from this remembrance. Thus, in this liminal period of transition, I have made it a practice to be more intentional about the ways I inhabit the spaces and places in which I find myself.
A significant place for me here, though not one I have too often frequented while living in San Diego, is Mount Laguna. It is a majestic and magnificent place, with trails that meander through meadows and groves of pine trees, and skirt mountainsides overlooking the Anza-Borrego desert. I felt very drawn to visit Mount Laguna before my departure in less than two weeks’ time, with the desire to hike a specific trail that has been on my mind for months.
Setting off on the trail, I breathed deep, enjoying the warm mountain air. I paused frequently to appreciate the beauty of the environment around me, wanting to be as present as possible on this last opportunity I will have to walk the trail for some time. I also found myself curious about the thoughts passing through my mind: songs new and old, elements of a yoga sequence I’ll be sharing this week, and reflections on significant conversations that have taken place over the past several days – an interesting array to watch unfold.
A thread of conversation that has been especially strong, necessarily so, has been that of love. More specifically, reflecting on and living into revolutionary love, a transcendent force that permeates all beings and all things, by which we are all connected and is the only constant amidst the everchanging nature of our lived reality. In this time of transition, I’ve been resting into reflection on what is temporary and what is constant, perceived or actual. Cherishing significant relationships that have been co-created and co-cultivated in the past months and years, I’m curious as to what elements of relationship will remain and what elements of relationship will transform. Knowing that change is inevitable, I center myself into the gratitude for what has been and an openness to what will be. In this process, connecting intentionally with the essence of love provides a deep nourishment as well as guiding force to propel me further in service of peace, justice, healing, and transformation.
Continuing along, I passed through familiar and unfamiliar portions of the trail until eventually I found myself on the east side of the mountain, taking moments in movement and stillness with my gaze stretching across the vast expanse of Anza-Borrego. Stopping at outlooks on the trail, I breathed in the landscape, feeling myself a part of the vastness that unfolded before me. As I traversed this portion of the trail, a part of the Pacific Crest Trail no less, a new thought came to inhabit my mind. I reflected on John O’Donohue’s passage written above, in relationship with how strong my desire was to walk this trail at this time. It struck me how the place of the trail so perfectly captured the current space of my life. I am preparing to move across the world, to live, learn, work in the beautiful community of practice that is Corrymeela. It is a new beginning, filled with unknowns. At this moment in my life, I am moving along an edge with my gaze cast eastward, eager to experience all that which will come. I am simultaneously immensely grateful for the grounding I feel in the nourishing relationships in which I share in San Diego.
What I thought would be a visit to a place I love came to be so much more. Feeling the threads of reflection from the week weave together, I was held not only in mountain landscape, but also in the continuing support of deeply loving and caring relationship. In the silence and spaciousness of the mountain, I was able to experience grounding in this moment of transition simultaneously from the inside out and from the outside in.
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