asking questions, breaking pencils

Two years of slow studying have come to an end. 

Yesterday we gathered around snacks, a strawberry champagne bottle, speeches, roses, choked laughter.

The Fellowship of the Nine has walked through self-doubt, attitude changes, insights, breathing exercises, goal orientation exercises, concentration exercises, speaking exercises, stress and fears and phobias, giggled stories, tears, a lot of theory, even a spot of quantum physics. And questions, questions, questions, asked and answered. Problems solved and problems brought to the surface. 

The slow studying wasn't very slow after all. I have filled hundreds of pages with notes, typed the same notes into my laptop, read and reread books, and coached clients - real people with real and complicated needs.

I have learned that horizontal breathing is vital, stress is fear, behaviour springs from needs, my need is to be seen and heard, to coach is to ask questions - and that I can break a pencil using only one finger.

These two years are over - and every single one of us seemed ready to howl with grief.

she walks ancient paths

A woman sparkles. She's not young, she's gorgeous. She's not lonely, she's praying.

Her past is filled with adventures like novels crammed onto overflowing bookshelves. Her time is spent studying how to grow beauty in a wintry city, like a lantern, like joy in darkened eyes. Her neighbour is the sea, glittering with marvels, and the forest, lush with birch trees and stars and howling wolves. Her nights are dreams, her days are birdsong and tears. 

She walks ancient paths towards a garden of delight. When she falls and breaks, she takes the hand that pulls her up. She loses herself in a fantasy where she dances on the edge of the atmosphere, wrapped in soft scarves. 

She throws parties with wine and chocolate. She cooks weird dishes from her youth in a tiny kitchen. She overflows. She goes missing. She shows up to help. She asks for help.

She's an explorer, a listener, a story collector and a story. 

She rewrites her life with a miraculous, courageous pen. And it's all true, because love has extinguished fear.

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." (Isaiah 30:21)

Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. (Jeremiah 6:16)