Ha! here I am embarking on the journey of writing and right in this moment I don’t feel like I have anything to write about. All Summer long, while I’ve been updating friends on my recovery process after a car accident in June, folks have been asking me to write more.
Whenever I think about writing I think of a time when I was a child and overheard someone saying to another - "be very careful what you commit to paper because you can’t take it back” . Good advice, I’m sure, but it left me with a kind of writer’s block and my excuse has always been - "Some people are born story tellers, others are born writers and I’m the first kind”! .
So what makes me say ‘Yes’ now? I guess the time is right. After the accident I realise that don’t want to die an unlived life and life can never be fully lived if I am stopped by fear along the way. This blog is my way of lifting one more limiting story and opening a door into a brand new world. My Narnia and I have no idea what’s at the back of the wardrobe!
I’m going to use this space to write stories, stories of transformation and about the people who have and continue to transform hearts and lives. I want to tell you about the companions who have walked and still walk with me along the way.
Unlike change, transformation is not something we can control or manage. It is something that happens to us over time. It asks for something to die in us. It asks us to wait, sometimes through many seasons when nothing at all seems to be happening. It asks us to allow something altogether new to be born in us, something we can’t even imagine.
Transformation can feel like a strange, frightening and lonely journey. While experts can help us to predict, manage and shape change in our lives, when it comes to transformation we just need companions who are willing to be with us exactly where we are, and just as we are.
I’ll introduce you to some of the companions of my own transforming heart. They are people, more often than not, who live in the margins of our our world. They intimately know what it takes to let go, wait, hope and choose life over and over, no matter what. When they come into my life as they often do, they disturb me to the point of near craziness, provoke a whirlwind of emotions and generate fierce love often in the same moment. They leave me shaken not stirred, turn my world upside-down and when I’m well and truly sitting in the mess, they sit beside me! Most everything I know about LOVE I have learned and am still learning from them.
Born head first into the world, the way of transformation for us humans, a bit like caterpillars, is an upside down kind of affair. While we might not actually be hanging upside down from a branch, times of transformation, can often feel that way. However it happens, we are all growing down into our feet. Strange how we call it growing up!
Becoming fully human involves a lot of letting go and as the old song goes - 'Letting Go is hard to do’.
What a great blessing it is when we come across Sherpas, people, at home in the territory of vulnerable humanity, people who know what it is to grow 'down and out' and can help us to navigate the unfamiliar and sometimes treacherous 'Way of the Heart'.
It will be fun and a privilege to introduce you to Badger, La Grande Baleine, Siobhán, The Music Man, A Wee Duet, Colin, Clarke, Mousey and the many other Sherpas I have met, and will no doubt keep meeting, over the years.
I know, even before I start, that my words will not do them justice but I would love to think that in some way through the stories I tell they will come alive for you and maybe become your companions too.
If Facebook can make friends of us from afar, maybe we can be companions near and far!