Do You Have A Place?

Do you have a place?

A place to go when the world feels off-kilter? (When you feel off-kilter?)

A place that reminds you who you are and welcomes you without demand.

A place that invites you to be with what is present. Whatever feelings or thoughts or longings are pooling within you. A place to let these flow, to loosen your grip on what you’ve held so tightly against yourself. To release.

A place that reminds you that there is a natural order to things. That there are seasons and cycles of birth and growth, death and decay. Where you can behold the decomposing tree as an expression of the beauty and harmony of nature. As you might the first purple crocuses of spring.

A place that reveals that there is something more. A greater vastness cradling within it the march of time and changing form. And that your essential nature is the vastness itself.

This is my place. I’ve been coming here since 2014, a year of upheaval. Back then it was a daily lifeline. I wandered the trails, listened to the trees and found my way back home to me.

Six years later this is still my place. Though sometimes I forget.

I get swept up in external goals, strategies to improve or fix myself. Or I’m feeling deeply at odds with a world that seems a little bit crazier than usual. I’m holding onto a perspective that is not aligned. But I’m so deep in it that I can’t see what’s right in front of me: the simple truth that I have disconnected from myself.

Finally, eventually, I remember my place. I return humbled, open. And without any judgment, I am received, welcomed and nourished. I loosen my grip on myself and begin to remember who I am and that all is well.

Do you have a place?