Good Friday and Friday the 13th

Still with trepidation and some disbelief, I sit to type out some words, an update. It's Good Friday today. And it looks as though Spring is pushing up through the ground and out through the branches with new life. Amazing to consider the gumption and pluck a seed must call on in itself and the world around it to push out through bark, through earth compacted by ice, snow, and salted sand. 


Checking in with myself, I notice that my breath has been suspended chronically for over a month. The real estate search which Bradford and I began in earnest at the beginning of Winter culminated in the discovery of a home just outside of Warner, NH - a home sitting on 10.6 acres with some field, some forest, and plenty of mature fruit trees and perennial gardens. And it has a home too - which is helpful. While there remain some T's to dot and I's to cross as part of the rigamarole surrounding the final closing (apparently the mortgage crisis has seriously altered the process of real estate), we hope to take possession of 186 Iron Kettle Road (at the corner of Iron Kettle and Red Chimney) next week and move to our new home on Friday the 13th!


I consider the phrase "take possession" and ask myself who has possessed whom.
This home has captured my imagination and my heart. It feels like the first place that I can truly call home - a space and place that I can grow with and into, learn from, offer something back to, and open to others as a place of peace, laughter, nurturance, and light. As much as I've fantasized about a home being a place that can offer me shelter and security, this property strikes me as an opportunity to expand and open rather than simply a private retreat from the world - a paradigm shift for me to call on my own pluck!


While I can construe so many notions of what I wish to do with the space, at my core I know that the space will guide both Bradford and me, ask us to pay attention, to listen, to imagine, and to make ourselves available to be of service in myriad ways. Here is the poem that came to my email today. Seems fitting.


Easter Exultet

Shake out your qualms. 

Shake up your dreams. 

Deepen your roots. 

Extend your branches.

Trust deep water 

and head for the open, 

even if your vision 

shipwrecks you. 

Quit your addiction 

to sneer and complain. 

Open a lookout. 

Dance on a brink. 

Run with your wildfire. 

You are closer to glory 

leaping an abyss 

than upholstering a rut. 

Not dawdling. 

Not doubting. 

Intrepid all the way 

Walk toward clarity. 

At every crossroad 

Be prepared 

to bump into wonder. 

Only love prevails. 

En route to disaster 

insist on canticles. 

Lift your ineffable 

out of the mundane. 

Nothing perishes; 

nothing survives; 

everything transforms! 

Honeymoon with Big Joy!

 

~ James Broughton ~