Places of the Heart…

Last weekend, I learned that I’ll have to leave the house I’ve lived in for the past three years. Its owner, a lovely woman, wants it back for her own family as a vacation home.

Not today, not tomorrow, but sometime in the next few months, I will have to say goodbye to this exquisite place that has taught me so much about love and belonging.

Goodbye to this bay, whose shifting sands, impromptu rainbows, floating islands, and shot-silk waters are an unfolding story that fills me daily with delight and joy.

Goodbye to my friends, the great bald eagles who teach me about power, commitment, vision, and what it takes to stay aloft in the wildest winter storms. Their diligence as they rebuild their nest each year in the tall cedar tree at the edge of this property. The patience, skill and fearless love with which they teach their little ones to fly.

My spirit companions, the golden eagles, nest a short distance away too. They show up to celebrate each threshold crossed, each passage navigated in my life, by swooping in widening circles in front of my house-an unparalleled dance of power and support.

The non-physical beings that overlight this landscape are my friends and teachers too. They tell me that love cannot be lost…that wherever I go next, their blessings travel with me.

I’ve been grieving, these past few days. Letting hot tears flow. My relationship with this place is as deep and profound as any human relationship. And yet there are no rituals in our culture for honoring such a relationship, for mourning its passage.

So I make my own rituals. Shaped by the changing colors of the sky. By the ebb and flow of the tides. And the pattern of this landscape that lives in my heart.

I’d love to hear about the places you love. And your own rituals for honoring and leaving these places of the heart.