Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.–Leonard Cohen, Anthem
It’s a chilly October morning. Outside my window, the mountain’s powerful face is veiled in soft, shifting clouds. A single arc of ridge undulates into view when the clouds part. The ridge disappears again as mists drift over a trackless sky.
That’s a lot of what this summer and early fall have been like, for me.
Something new is being born. I catch glimpses of it — in my dreams, out of the corner of my eye as it wings past, waving, offering the curve of a cheek, the delicate angle of wrist bones, before it vanishes into its cloud-wreathed home.
The gentle swell of expectancy it leaves behind after these visitations nurtures my tentative faith into something more robust. Faith that this Something is being teased into shape in the inner realms. Even though I don’t yet know what It is, or who I will be when it emerges into the world.
Much like the last few pregnant weeks before each of my sons was born, I sleep a lot, meeting this new being in the communion of dreams. She greets me there, so vividly alive, so full of love and delight and generous joy that I am bereft when I wake up without her in my arms.
I am both preparing, and being prepared, for her arrival.
The tissues in my body are loosening, softening. My mind and heart are loosening and softening too, releasing their grip on the-way-things-have-been, opening to embrace warm baby weight, preparing to inhale that fresh-baked scent of new baby.
Sixty-one years old, and this birth is as filled with expectancy and wonder, awe and a tinge of breathlessness, as the very first time I encountered the power of the creative spirit.
The first time I climbed a tree. Or met a panther in the wild. Or sketched a blade of grass on thick vellum paper, the radiant life before me shining its light in my heart, the stick of charcoal pencil a magic wand in my hand.
My business and I are doing practical work to prepare for our new arrival. We’ve painted her room a tender shade of sky blue. A sturdy crib stands under the window, lined with flannel sheets and silk blankets, to cradle her in her new home. On the ceiling, a glistening mural of stars, moons and galaxies-a reminder of her other home.
Everything around me conspires to support this birth. The earth breathes with me; its pulse beats in my neck, in my temple. Cedar trees wave their arms in celebration and welcome.
Clients bring offerings of needs and desires, adding their longing and genius to the push of arrival.
The work that I do has always been spirit at play, patterning the everyday world of work and business, love and health, money, family, relationships, children-a magnet shaping dreams into reality.
Now, I see we’re all hungry for more.
When I first began teaching and doing transformational work, more than thirty years ago, the gap between spirit and the world of work and business was a chasm-it required feats of engineering, bridges with steel girders between this shore and that.
Today, we’ve all grown up. We’re cheek to cheek with our souls, eager for a more intimate relationship with spirit in our lives and in our businesses.
We aren’t waiting for Prince Charming, or Princess Leila, to wake us up to a world of magic and possibility.
We’re rolling up our sleeves, and learning how to co-operate with the world of spirit to co-create the world in which we want to live.
For me, this means listening closely to the needs of my world–to my clients, students, colleagues and friends. Creating programs and classes, workshops and retreats that are practical, affordable, and that help people and their businesses flourish.
It means finding accessible ways to teach skills of inner connection, co-creation, intuition and working with energy and spirit to as many people as possible.
It’s scary to let go of what’s familiar, especially when it’s working. Yet life calls us to take risks, to welcome newness into the world and be willing to be changed by it.
What is calling you today? What bells are you ready to ring? Ah, the cracks — the cracks through which the light streams in!