“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”    ҉    Rumi

  Ah, there are so many ways that one’s heart opens and shuts as quickly as a camera lens. The barriers we raise in self-protection. They can become so subtle and automatic that we may not even notice our behaviors.  I think our hearts are a lot more fragile than we are willing to admit. How often do we close ourselves off from giving and receiving Love and to fully engaging life?  

 I am at a crossroads in life. It’s as though a big chapter has ended but I have not yet turned the page to begin a new one.  This in between space and emptiness is as uncomfortable as wearing a dress two sizes to small.  Yet, I know it is important to take a little time to honor this life transition and go within to listen deeply, reverently. It is not too often that I am willing to dip beneath the surface and encounter my vulnerabilities  in a kind, non-judging way.   To acknowledge my fear and the barriers I have built up through the years. This is a time of letting go of some things to precious to speak and of old worn out habits that are no longer useful or life giving.

 As difficult as it may seem to overcome ambivalence and resistance to change, a simple beginning is to focus on a renewing source of life, our breath.   To breathe in our fears and to breathe out love.  In this way, with each new breath we can begin to Love again.

I am grateful to Candace Nagle for sharing the following poem with me, which I now gladly share with you.

 “Wage Peace”

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

                                                                                                                 ~By Judyth Hill

~liz Sorensen Wessel

Watercolor by ~liz