Beginning anew!

After a summer of focusing on hospitality in the truest Benedictine* sense, my bed & breakfast season is winding down, which allows me to resume my morning practices - including writing! What a GREAT RELIEF it is to befriend my journal again. In the quiet sanctuary of my bedroom, the clamour of the day not yet acknowledged, I ramble and explore the back roads of my own being. It's not that I've been living superficially all summer as I cooked, cleaned, shopped, made beds... no, I still pondered on all kinds of questions and observations that arose from encounters with human guests, animals, (both the wild and the friendly kind) and the earth beneath our feet. It's more that without that writing time I didn't have a chance to hold up my thoughts to the Light and see where the shadows distorted my perceptions. I was less likely to notice those times and places where I forgot to be kind to myself. By not writing poems - which is like making myself available as a voice for angels and faeries - I didn't get to learn the secrets of the earth that were unfolding before my nose. And it was harder to remember that I too am a creature of light, a sacred dancer, a singer of heart songs, and a healer of the earth. Yes, it's been a long summer, beautiful, fecund, and mysterious. I celebrate the generous abundance of it and I rejoice out loud that I am now returned to my morning practices, that place of a well-fed soul and spiritual yoga!


* Benedictine hospitality asks us to treat all guests as holy, as messengers from the deep, as precious and as a blessing by their presence.... Joan Chittister describes Benedictine hospitality as “unboundaried hearts.” See http://tinyurl.com/ln6f8u