Number of dogs belonging to hospitalized people I love that I will walk today: 2
Number of bags of dog poop I have thrown out (before lunch): 3
Number of servings of soup I made and froze this week for delivery: 12
Number of children I will pick up from school or the bus stop to cover our babysitter who is recovering from her surgery: 6
Number of crazy (but purely lovable) dear male friends who thought he might be able to WALK HOME from OUTPATIENT SUGERY on the bottom of HIS FOOT who I tracked down at the pharmacy and drove home: (thankfully only) 1
Number of times I stopped to say a prayer of thanksgiving for the beautiful life I get to live, the people I love and my ability to give to them, and my healthy beautiful child who has made me laugh several times already today: at least 100.
Seems like its been a pretty good day.
I have a friend who is in a lot of pain. He doesn’t want to admit it. I think that he believes that if he slows down to see it that something awful will catch up with him, that he might have to face it, that he might even have to bear it.
I see the grimaces that he tries to pass off as his everyday smiles but I know the difference and can feel the chilly winds settle in now in this autumnal time of grief. I feel the shift the way a farmer knows the snow is coming. His impatience is palpable. He shrugs off my hugs, my soft offers of care with the clang bang clang of a blacksmith forging a shield, protection I suppose, though from this angle is is hard to see what is so big that it needs to be kept outside our circle.
When I call him on the grief that appears to be leaking through the cracks in the wall he has so carefully constructed around his heart, he turns to leave. I am his bell calling his attention to the pain he so desperately wants to ignore. He would rather not see me, hear me, even know me now. He leaves me standing there with my empty arms, the ones that meant to shelter him, held open. He rejects all that is good about me when he turns to go. To accept the gift I offer, the balm that could soothe the sting, means opening to the very wound that he fears will slay him. I am dangerous.
Sometimes I’d like to leave him out there, in the valley of despair all by himself if that is what he wishes. I long to wave goodbye to him and get on with my day, escaping the ugly icky feeling of being rejected.
But long ago I made a promise. I made it even though he doesn’t remember. The fact he doesn’t remember does not release me from its solemn vow. I whispered it in childhood to him lifetimes ago when we were small. I told him I would not leave, no matter what.
And so I take those empty arms of mine and stay as he runs, and he throws himself into this and that, as he distracts his throbbing heart as convinces himself the throb is just his heartbeat, that it does not exist, that it is all just fine. And I stand, quietly, not too far away, hoping that when he is tired he will allow himself a rest at last and there I will be with a shoulder. Maybe he will see me then. And maybe he will let me kiss his pain and release it.
Or maybe not. Perhaps he will continue to pretend not to see me with my gentle, healer’s hands. Nevertheless I will not abandon him. I will stay. Even when he hates me, I will stay.
I will not leave him all alone, for he is me, and I am him and the healer and the hurt are the same.
For my sweet, wise vibrant healer woman who dwells inside. The ancient part of my soul who never leaves me even when I have run far away, even though I have ignored her love for years. An ode to her voice and her patience. An answer to her call.
Saturday afternoon found me in the country. I sat in the breezy sunshine with an amazing and powerful woman and I watched while horses ran about in a pasture and Max and her children climbed trees and swung on swings. I was there as the first step of my year’s quest to explore what it would mean to become a healer. We talked for awhile about tuition and student loans, grad school schedules and homework, the difficulties of working while going to school and the financial viability of setting up an acupuncture practice. The data was useful but I still felt adrift, a little scared and completely at a loss for how I am going to make this dream come true while working and being a mama.
I asked her how she decided to become a healer. She told me that she was sitting on the couch one day, praying, meditating and wondering what it was that she should do with her life. And then, suddenly, and she just knew it was something she should do. She said that day she just opened her heart to it. She didn’t question or fuss, even though it required moving halfway across the country. She just heard her heart whisper its dream and she obeyed it without question. There was no process. There was just a decision.
I am always amazed when I meet people who listen to their inner wisdom the very first time it bubbles up. Who take the dreams in their own hearts seriously. Who don’t think but act when their heart, their soul, their own inner voice of God starts to nudge them. I am in awe of those people who know what it is that their hearts were meant to do and can just fearlessly leap into the void and trust that if they only do it, all will be well.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just leaped, joyfully instead of hemming and hawing, weighing facts and figures. I wonder what it would feel like to just run, spread my wings, open my heart and let go. I wonder what it is to just trust that voice inside — to know it is stronger, smarter, wiser and truer than any of the other facts, opinions and experts I seem to want to consult. I wonder what would happen if I could float in that place of radical trust and not question the how or the why or the when but just to go with what is.
I wonder what would happen in this world if we could all feel free to leap so joyfully into our dreams–the things our hearts somehow seem to be calling us to do. I wonder how the world would be if we could all just recognize our bliss and follow it, unafraid.
My dearest Jackie, who breaks all the rules, brought me a birthday gift tonight. This rockin’ Celtic T-shirt fits me like a glove, and resonates at exactly the same frequency of my little Irish soul. I am never taking this shirt off!
The words around the heart say: Like all things that are precious to us, we tend to keep our emotions under lock and key. Love itself is far too beautiful a gift not to share with everyone.
After a dinner of perfectly grilled kebabs, kick butt fish stew and the best carrot salad this side of north Africa, after a homemade ice cream cake that beat any other I have ever tasted, we sat in a circle and they, my beloved tribe helped me to create my list. My list of things to do before I turn forty. What’s beautiful about this exercise is that in adding an item to my list they pledged to do something (big or small) to help me get it done, to be my a co-conspirator, an angel to assist me, to hold my hands and jump feet first with me into the wild and messy river of my life.
In the spirit of love for them, in the spirit of my love for this life, I embrace this to do list, this plan. I hearby pledge to wrap my heart around these items and sink into the joyfulness of them.
- Take a kayak lesson on the Potomac
- Learn to throw a pot
- Perform at an open mic night
- Sing a duet with sweet Andy McD
- Learn to Irish step dance
- Go see Step Afrika
- Take Max to see Sweet Honey in the Rock
- Start to build my Goddess garden I have been dreaming of
- Paint my living room and hallway
- Create (and dare I say perfect) a gluten-free pizza dough recipe. (Homemade pizza and Eric’s homemade bread are the only two things that will tempt me off my healthy gluten free path. This gets me 50% of the way there! )
- Explore acupuncture and my calling as a healer
- Start that girls’ (age 8-11) knitting club I have been talking about
- Ride a roller coaster
- Stay a night at the Purple Fiddle
- Learn to swim
- Run a 10K
- Learn to count to ten in three African languages
- Finally master the f’in F chord
- Teach Max to knit (my sweet boy added this to my list, saying he would help by doing the learning!)
- Go out to hear live music at least ten times (this is an easy one which just makes me feel productive!)
- Figure out how to live migraine free
Wanna jump in with me? What do you think I might do in this crazy wild messy year before I turn 40? Lets do it together.
Thirty nine years ago today, with the gentle brush of an angel’s wings, I was shepherded into my mother’s arms. I have been held ever since. Passed from one love to another, handled with care, handled roughly, given space to move and wiggle and grow but always held. When I am at my loneliest, and I sink into empty silence I can feel the web of hundreds of hands, the ones who held me then, who hold me now, who I hold keeping me afloat.
This year I have learned many things but most of all this: My life is not a landscape to be overcome, nor is it a mountain pass to survive. My life is a wild and rushing river, but it is not meant to be forged or crossed; there is no “this side” or “the other” there is only in, as in with both feet, swept away. Sometimes it is wild and rushing, sometimes it is calm and peaceful, often it is murky, usually messy but always it is exactly what it is at that moment–nothing more, nothing less, until it changes again. And it changes, around every bend it changes. I have often waded in the shallows, clinging to the shores, searching for a bridge that will carry me over but there is no over. There is only in.
Last night at the stroke of midnight in the arms of music and laughter I was carried again into another year. The current will carry me away some place wild and wooly or unexpected I am sure, no matter how I cling to the scenery I just passed.
The other day a friend looked me in the eyes and said, “Trust your life”. What other choice is there?
So here’s to jumping in with both feet, to getting wet, to stopping attempts to cross and instead to lifting both feet up, laying back and trusting the water.
Maxidoodle hugging Stephen: Because he is brilliant, because he is my friend, because he would be flattered for me to post a photo of him on my blog, because he gave me inspiration for my perfect birthday present…
My 39th birthday is just a week away. Thirty-nine feels big and heavy, more so than even 40. Perhaps because it is a “last”–the last year I will be in my thirties. I relish being in my thirties. Thirty-something felt like the perfect age–young enough but still perfectly grown-up. The lesson of the last years have been poignant and real and messy and wonderful. This last decade has been an amazing adventure. It was like nothing I expected and yet I landed exactly where I needed to be. I love being thirty-something–I admit it and truth be told, I am mourning letting this decade go. And while I am still 12 months away from that inevitable moment, I find myself sighing and imagining how it will be to have a year of lasts. Just like I faced my senior year of college wistfully, knowing it would be my last as a full-time relatively irresponsible student, I feel I am embarking on the last year of a decade so sweet. I know that there is nothing to be gained by holding onto this past, but I am still feeling strangely well…wistful.
I think that this wistfulness is highlighted because I feel like I am standing on sort of threshold, in some sort of transition, as though I am on the verge of some big kind of shift in my life and it just happens to be happening at the end of this decade. Perhaps that’s why 39 feels so big and heavy to me. My age has become a symbol for me–of being at the end of something and at the start of something else. It feels like that last leg of this journey before a new one will start. And maybe I am feeling a little afraid. And a little bit as though I want to cling to something comfortable, even something as crazily comfortable as my age.
Yesterday, on our way out to get lunch I shared this with my friend and brother Stephen. We were talking about the little dinner party that my friend Cathy is throwing for me next week. Stephen can’t keep secrets and has shared with me every bit of news he gets about the affair. I told him about how this birthday feels so pivotal to me. I shared with him why. I told him that it feels like one last dance of being thirty-something (for whatever that means). Stephen is well past thirty-something so he rolled his eyes at me but one of the reasons I love him so is that he gets me so deeply and fundamentally. He recognized my need for ritual not ridicule.
I expected him to make fun of my youthful silliness and to tell me to get over myself. But instead he was thoughtful. “Since you feel this way,” he remarked, “you need to honor it and celebrate it…go with it–don’t fight it” And then he got excited.
We had been talking about how I didn’t want presents for my birthday but about how Cathy had mistakenly emailed them all that I did want presents which he thought was bold and brave and refreshing–so much so that when she corrected the email and told them that I DIDN’T want presents, he was terribly disappointed. He has been on the quest to get me to ask for a present ever since.
“Aha,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “I KNOW what we can do for you. Its a perfect non-present present you can ask for AND it will help mark this pivotal year.”
“You need to task us all with coming up with coming up with 40 things we are going to commit to help you do/experience/see or live before you turn 40. We need to be your conspirators during this year of transition. That can be our present to you. “ What a lovely idea for the keeper of lists… I wear my dreams on my sleeve. I keep my list of 100 things to do before I die pinned to my desk. Every year I make my Mondo Beyondo list and share it shamelessly with anyone who is interested.
We both stood in the September sunshine for a second and basked in the brilliance of his idea about the perfect birthday present.
“For instance…you want to skydive–who is going to volunteer to go with you?” Now it was my turn to roll my eyes at him. Stephen is sometimes as insane as he is brilliant. I am going no where near an open door of any plane. “OK, OK…maybe not skydiving. But you get my point. And we can help you. We can suggest amazing adventures or things you might not even think of…And you don’t have to do it all if you don’t want…you can CHOOSE what to do but the point is it can be a year of no excuses because you will have help in getting it done.”
I love this idea. The idea of making this last year of my thirties about choosing how live lusciously, full and bravely with the help of my friends and community. I love it so much I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I wonder what kind of good habits will it spawn and support–a habit of choosing adventure, a habit of asking for help, a habit of not waiting until a better time, a habit of living in the present instead of the future, a habit of saying WHY NOT NOW?
And so I told Cathy to correct her email once again and to hint about the present I wanted most.
And I throw this open to you my friends, those who stop by here and who have listened to the whispers of my heart…Can you contribute to this present? Do you have a suggestion for me and are you willing to be my conspirator if I wish to follow through on your idea? If you want to help…leave a comment here or email me at meg (at) megcasey (dot) com. Next week on my birthday (or maybe the day after) I will share my list (created by Stephen and our gang along with all of you) here. I can’t wait to unwrap this one!
Originally posted August 16, 2007
At last, on Thursday, I rise before the sun. Lisa stumbles down with coffee in hand and drags me out of bed. Together we pull the kayaks into the water, though first we inspect them thoroughly with flashlights, making sure there are no sleeping spiders to tickle our feet. And then with few words we push off onto an ocean of glass and mist.
The lake is still. Only one lone bird is awake and singing. Fog hangs down silent and heavy over the pines—the distant shore but a watercolor—an idea of a forest—a memory of one long ago.
As I move silently I half expect the Arthurian lady of the lake to appear and whisper something wise, perhaps ancient mother secrets of creation. My paddle dips into the water. But the ripples disappear almost instantly as we glide glide glide along the lake, paddling to the middle. The eastern sky is becoming blue now and then from behind the Monet pines fingers of orange reach up, like a hand offering hope. Then the great globe rises brilliant and true—a drop of primary color oil paint on a watercolor masterpiece: brilliant, garish, warm.
We sigh, Lisa and I. We break our silence to talk of metaphors of God and sun. I point out that every ancient culture worships the sun in one way or another because of moments just like these when a dark night instantly becomes day. More birds are in the sky and trees now waking their children and their neighbors with hymns to this hope—this promise that we have one more chance to live. The mist is fading fast, giving way to a brilliant day of blue skies.
I breathe in the smell of pine and cedar and whisper thank you. It is late before we beach the boats. Activity has broken out now on shore. I enter the cabin to see my child raise his head and smile—“Good morning, mama!” I pick him up and wrap him in his blankets, snuggling him in my lap. “Yes,” I breathe into his little ear. “it is”
Hearts are funny things.
They carry in their memory, the echo, the footprint of every kiss, every caress, every sorrow, every hurt. Hearts remember like elephants–they remember blissful freefalls and hard impacts. Each of these memories lives in the tissue, wordlessly. There is no language but the muscle memory is clear and rises up through our hopes and our fears. I have come to believe that hope and fear is nothing but those old memories living on and through in our hearts.
For hope is nothing more than a search for something we may have lost somewhere between the time we left the great blissful stage of oneness and now. And fear is nothing more than the scar tissue left from a loss–The acknowledgment that maybe just maybe our beloved will disappear, that our hearts will stop feeling this love, that it will all fall apart, forever.
This past year for me has been a year of yearning. I couldn’t name it at the time, but now standing apart from it somewhat I can see. My heart beat stretching between hope and a sort of fear.
I had always associated fear with anxiety–that somehow fear meant that I was in a deep scary place. But looking back now I just see that fear is the other side of the coin called hope. Even in my happiest yang-i-est, sunniest days that hope fear combo was ever present.
As I fell head over heels in love with my tribe this year, the people in my life who make my life so rich and full, I found my heart so full of a cocktail of hope and fear that at times the bursting feeling felt so distracting. With every perfect moment that passed I felt my heart holding on to, hoping that that perfect moment would be followed by many many more just like it . As each perfect moment passed, I found my heart fearing that if I let go of this moment I may never see another just as lovely. The clinging and the hoping and the attaching that this is how it would be forever…always like this…That was the beat of my heart. Expand into hope, contract into fear, expand into hope and not even realize it is happening. Bumbum…bumbum…Silently unnoticed like my own heart beat.
Looking back though I can feel how much energy this hope and fear sapped from me. Looking back I can see what it cost me, this yearning. I can see with 20/20 hindsight.
A series of things have brought me to a place where I can observe how hope and fear play out in my heart, in my soul, in my hardest moments and my best days. A series of things have happened that showed me that hope, fear and attachment do not change anything. The universe spins. The world evolves. Moments come and dissipate and change and we cannot hold onto any of them no matter how lovely or how frightening. The moments dissolve seemlessly into another and no amount of hope or fear is going to change the next one from coming.
Letting go of hope and fear seems to be my soul’s work these days. Seeing how omnipresent it is, recognizing that every time I think I have let it go, I uncover a new layer, more subtle, less stark, but there nonetheless. Letting go of hope and fear means truly letting go of my attachment to the outcomes. I wonder if I ever really can let go of all my attachments. I seem to think that if I can just let that last layer burn away that my heart might be finally be free to expand outside the confines of all that hope/fear scar tissue.
When I was a little girl, I used to dream of flying. I dreamed I was running along the top of the hill behind my elementary school, the hill where we used to go sledding, and that I would throw my body into the wind and it would catch me and I would fly.
I loved that dream. Every now and again I have a similar one. I dream that I am running and that I throw myself into a void, off a cliff, into the wind and I am lifted and that I soar.
I thought about this dream all day today as I contemplated this big word of the day TRUST. Ever since I was a child trust has been my own person Mt Everest, my own Rubicon, my biggest worst.
It is amazing to me how trust is so multilayered. How we can trust someone with our bodies but not necessarily with our thoughts. How we can trust someone with the key to our home, but we are not sure we will ever give them the key to our heart. How we can trust someone with our safety, but not necessarily our souls.
How we can trust a little and convince ourselves that we are trusting completely.
What does it mean to love fearlessly? Truly fearlessly. To really trust completely. Do I trust anyone completely? Do I even trust myself completely?
I think if I did it must be like flying.
I think it must be jumping into the wind and knowing that I will be carried.
I think it is the trust that the wind is strong enough to lift me.
In my dreams I never test the wind. In my dreams the air does not need to assure me that it will catch me. In my dreams I leap unafraid and I soar free. In my dreams I fly and I am carried to places I had no intention of traveling to but I trust the currents and the air and I know where it is going is somehow right–always right. And I know that my landing will be soft.
I know I am being called to fly. I feel it, the currents beckoning to me. All that is left is for me to throw myself on the mercy of the wind. And it comes down to this–whether I can lift my arms and trust the unseen forces to lift me higher and higher into the life I am called to.
Whether I can trust.
I have been trying to write for days now about the experience of turning corners, of coming back home, or starting to grow a little lighter. I have been trying but words have been escaping me, so profound and deep and yes scary this experience is, this coming home to myself. I don’t know how to write about something so big.
I stayed for days in a dark quiet place, knowing that the reason I was there was that I was facing a great big fear–the fear that is my great foe, the monster that lives in my closet and hides under my bed. I felt that if I could stay there in the dark and not hide under the covers, if I could stare her down, sit with her and maybe get to know her that maybe I would just finally get rid of her. And so I did. I sat with the fear of being abandoned. I sat with the fear of being left vulnerable. I sat and I sat. And I felt the fear flood me and fill me and rise up into my throat. I had no energy for triumph or overcoming. So I just sat.
And then, the day after the full moon, as the moon started to wane, a tiny light started to grow in my heart. A light that allowed itself to spark when a friend invited me out to a swanky party and I allowed myself to say yes. Coming up for air and being with my dear ones, allowing them to express their love in the simplest of gestures–shared scotch, stolen conversation, a late night walk–it a gave me peace. It whispered to me that I knew the way home. I did. I really did.
The light grew stronger over the weekend as I sat at the pool, flanked by two of my favorite guys. One who brought me a latte, fresh from the coffee place down the street, another who loaned me his magazine, played with my child and brought me bottled water. I noticed that though I had not left my chair for hours, all my needs were met and I felt held, cradled in the simplest manner, like a child.
It grew the night I ate two dinners. One with my child, his friend and mine. To strangers we must have looked like we were a family on a Sunday night outing but we were pieces of three families merged into one. We were family–just not the nuclear kind. We were my family. We were out but I felt at home. Later that night I ate the best steamed mussels I have had in a long time and salad from a neighborhood garden, roasted asparagus and ripe yellow tomatoes–I was not hungry for food but I was for the love with which it was prepared, the pleasure with which it was plated just for me, there spontaneously. I ate it with a side of laughter and a bit of girl talk and felt a bit brighter all the while.
Two days ago I sat at an acupuncture appointment and told my partner in healing, my beloved teacher and guide about my descent into the fear of abandonment and my humble return home. She sat quiet for a moment, contemplating what I had told her and then she asked me to think about something while she left the room. She asked me to think hard and to answer from my deepest darkest place. She asked me if it was OK to be needy.
By the time she got back tears streaked my cheeks. I wanted to say yes, for when crisis has rocked my world, I have appreciated those who sheltered me and took care of my needs. I wanted to say yes because I loved to be there for those who needed me, their neediness was not a burden but a gift to me–a gift that allowed me to be my best self.
But I couldn’t say that it was OK for me to be needy. Because in the end, I want to believe that I, and I alone am all that I need. Needing others, allowing them to love me meant that maybe they wouldn’t and I would go without. Incomplete.
I wanted to believe, I needed to believe that I could do it all on my own–that I would never need to depend on anyone again–that I would never need fear abandonment. That I could pull the covers over my head and make the monster disappear.
She looked at me with great love in her eyes but her voice was stern and strong. She essentially said this: Meg, when you give and give and do not allow those who love you to give back to you, when you take care of the needy but do not allow yourself to be needy in return, you rob your community and you set yourself out of balance. And the universe is going to kick you in the ass to set it right again. You need to receive love and if the only time you are going to allow yourself to be loved is when you are recovering from a crisis then you will be hit with crisis after crisis. Its just that simple.
The thing you need to do to heal is simple but not easy: Allow yourself to be loved.
Allow yourself to be loved.
It is so easy for me to love others, it is so easy for me to see the beauty that they bring to the world and to appreciate it for the rough, cranky and imperfect gift it is but frankly if I am completely honest I have a lot of doubts about whether they will love me in return. Not because I don’t see myself as loveable but because, perhaps I doubt whether I can count on them to rise to the occasion of loving me completely.
I trust myself to love them, but I do not trust them to love me back. I dance around the doubts, while I make excuses for my dear ones–all the reasons why love, fearless true love is hard. I tell myself all the reasons why I shouldn’t expect it while I prepare myself for disappointment. I tell myself how hard it is for them to see me completely. I compensate in my mind and in my heart for all the ways I anticipate that they will let me down.
I really sell my dear ones short.
And yet, every time I need them so many of them rise, rise, rise to the occasion. Not all of them mind you, but the good ones. The ones I call tribe. They always do in the smallest and simplest of ways. A shared drink, a sweet song, a movie ticket, a tea, painting my toenails, making me a salad, making my bed, bringing me a latte, loaning me a book, telling me a joke, sending me an email, a phone call, a secret whispered message while lighting a candle for me. There are the big ways too–the ways so big, and wide and open. They rise, they always rise.
And if I am honest, they rise everyday whether I need them or not. And maybe the one who fails to see completely is me. Maybe it is I who fails to see them and how they would cradle me if only, if only I let them.
And it is this, this simply complex and impossibly easy thing, that is blocking me.
As we talked, as I struggled to wrap my head and heart around her words, as I struggled to understand how I failed my loved ones by not allowing them to love, the most amazing thing happened.
Over her shoulder a rainbow appeared. It stretched fully across the horizon and filled the picture window. I stopped her mid sentence and told her to turn around. We both walked to the window, with mouths agape and gazed at the rainbow. And then, we witnessed a second rainbow hover over the first. It was a miracle, nothing I had ever seen. It was brilliant. It was perfect.
That pair of rainbows stayed with us through the rest of my appointment. As she took my pulses and inserted needles. As I lay on the table, I gazed out the window at its brillance. It was a message, a punctuation mark, a song, a miracle. It said YES. It said WHAT SHE SAID. It said TRUST. It said OK, DAMN IT IF YOU NEED A SIGN HERE IT IS.
As I drove home I was sure that I was changed forever. And in some ways I suppose I am. But in other ways I see how this fear is sticking with me still, how stubborn I am. How hard it is to let go of fear. How this journey does not end at the rainbow, but how the rainbow is just the beginning.
Tonight, the one who loves my child so dearly got another lecture from me about how he needs to let me know if its getting to be too much, this adoration, this affection, this responsibility. He looked at me with patience but I could see he was tired of this conversation and I saw in his weary face how I was selling him short again. How I was doubting how much he could love. How I failed to see him with his big heart for what it was–big and wide open. How scared I was that his love for Max would change. How scared I was that if we asked too much of him, his love for us would change.
And I asked myself, can I trust my dear ones to love us completely? Can I trust them to see me and still stay? Can I leap unafraid into their arms? Can I really do that?
And I thought about the phrase, FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY. And I wondered if I could? Really. What would it cost? Everything and nothing and everything again.
I don’t know how to end this post. Because I don’t know how to write about coming home. It don’t know how to write about something that feels so big and scary and beautiful and bright. I don’t know how to end something that speaks only about beginnings.
So I will just begin again. And begin again. And again.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always —A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be wellWhen the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.-TS Eliot, The Four Quartets
