Mwami Shimirwa

The title of this post is Kinyarwanda for “Thank you God for love beyond our understanding”….not sure how it all ties with my thoughts below but here goes my free flow…. 

I’ve been inhaling stories, reading, reading and filling my mind with words, but finding it difficult to pour them back out onto the page….but today the whole sky has opened up and so am I.  As I sit here listening to the wind chimes, my heart is happy-content in a quiet way.  The sun is shining on my face and the breeze stirs my heart.  The salty air tickles my nose and I realize that this is my home.  I’ve been a reluctant Floridian for 8 years now.  I’ve spent so much time dreaming of the next place…missing the mountains, the seasons, the snow.  I’ve spent years waxing poetic about the spirit and perseverance of New Orleans, missing the food I love, the sounds of jazz and blues wafting into the streets, the genteelly ways of home that so few can understand.  I miss the wetlands, the moss dripping from trees, and the accents so thick you could cut them with a knife.  I miss the vastness of the starry starry night sky that I remember so fondly from my time in Colorado.  I say all the time that I know Universe has plans for me.  I’m meant for so much more than this, I’m just listening for the whispers … hoping to stumble upon the answers.  In my thirst for more, I’ve been blind to the beauty right before me.  Yes, there are grand plans…but this is my home and the people I have come to know are like my family.  It takes all types, all walks of life to teach us our life lessons…and I am learning subtly each and every day.  I have a friend who says It is only ok to go when it is ok to stay…and it’s finally ok to stay, because everything is exactly as it should be.  This may not be the life I planned, but when I slow down long enough, when I open my heart and my eyes, I realize I am shrouded in love and beauty.  Oh yes, I am so much more, but what a condescending worldview to embody.  I can learn lessons from the humbleness of a street person if only I am open enough to receive them.  I can watch people who hurt others, who lie and live without integrity, and I am reminded of how NOT to live my life.  I can watch others tumble down the rabbit hole of addiction and choose to recognize we are all just wounded souls grasping for love and acceptance in our own little ways.  I may seem hard to some, but ever since I was a very young child I have been deeply empathetic.  I’d hear the nightly news at 3 or 4 and cry for what I understood of the world.  I could feel the pain and the weight of the world in a way my words cannot do justice.  The problems always seem so big, the answers so complicated, the sheer magnitude paralyzing.  But here is what I know for sure…the love of a single heart can make a world of difference.  One person may be so small, but by not doing anything at all we betray our true purpose of being in existence at all.  I’ve written before that I’m here but by the grace…I was saved from the depths of despair to answer a calling…Yes, there is so much more…and it will all happen all in due time…but I can do what I can with what I have, right where I am right now.  And the answer is clear that staying centered in the moment and being fully present and open is the only way.  Thirsting for more is a good thing…but not to the exclusion of missing the blessings that are right before me now.

Thank you my muse for pushing me, for making me articulate, for the diversity of thought that makes the world fun.  I too can’t wait to see what I end up doing…I know I am not too small.

~ by Phoenix Rising on May 16, 2010.