Soul Notes: Birthday Passages – A Steady Heart, A Kiss of Wind 6-9 December 2009
As you approach the day of your birth, wander back with wonder, noticing the great distance you have walked on your journey through this lifetime as the one whose very name, Amy Lou, means “Beloved Light.” You have pierced the illusions that have held you hostage for many lifetimes and may now claim a level of victory over them that has not been reachable until now for you. I celebrate you and rain my love and gratitude upon you.
Your heart has been cleared of much of its burden – the dark pain of many lifetimes and many seeming-realities in the land of the illusion of Separateness. Your friend heard the confirmation of your arrival into this seemingly new place (new experience, yes; new place, no) when she heard my voice say, “Her heart is now steady.” You will grow into your new “clothes” (heart) much as you did when you were a child and your mother bought a dress a bit too large for you to then oh-so-naturally grow into. Your anticipation of growing helped you grow; the love for the dress helped you grow, fueling your anticipation and enjoyment of the upcoming moment when it seemed suddenly that you had grown overnight and could wear what you’d so eagerly awaited, wear it as if it had been made just for you.
You will find, just as you did with the perfect-fitting dress, that the steadiness in your heart “becomes you” and will feel as natural as your old, favorite tennis shoes. The steady heart we speak of is your stability, your rootedness in your heart of hearts – your True Self, that which you call the Authentic Self. These roots have taken hold, Beloved Light, and will not fail you.
This is not to say that every fear or challenge has disappeared from your life, or that you will never face loss, disappointment, or adversity again. You know that these experiences will come. Yet, your steady heart, rooted and grounded now (as it will remain), is what permits the movements of Life on your dear Earth to be simply that: movements for you to wade, float, surf, or cling to your board through. Change is constant; movement never ceases, for this is the nature of Life. And the steady heart in you is more than ever before able to ride the waves of Life’s unfoldings, Life’s revelations, its gifts and guises, and to ride them with unexpected appreciation for the journey’s constant evolution.
You have always loved the wind. As it howls outside your door tonight, outside a door open to receive it on this, the first night after your birthday, understand that you chose purposely to open your heart to Wind very long ago. With steadfast determination, you invited both its power and its kiss, permitting it to blow through you, pulling the covers off the hidden places and sweeping through the house of your belonging*, your Being, to clear out all shadows and mysteries hiding in midnight darkness.
Then, you saw through a glass darkly. Now, face to face, and with an embodied knowing of all my faces, all my facets, all my children, you are able to sleep through your midnights in the certainty of faith and trust and expectation that the sun, the glorious sun, will rise to greet you in the morning.
The steadiness of your heart is what Wind has given by diligently blowing so powerfully and so long. When it blows as it does tonight, delivering east-bound planes to their destinations ahead of schedule, may you be reminded of the clearing that Wind has provided you over these many years. From this clearer place, may you also recognize that Wind’s kiss, coming as it will on a soft Spring morning, is at hand even now in Winter’s slow, southern march to solstice, to stillness, to turning. Tonight, your dear Wind brings with it the kiss of my gratitude, which has always been yours and ever will be. May your now steady heart receive this kiss as my reminder, too, that your presence in this life is a kiss daily delivered to those in your care. May it be so received.
Blessed Be.
*David Whyte, The House of Belonging
The House of Belonging
I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that
thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.
But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and I thought
it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,
it must have been
the first easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,
it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.
And
I thought
this is the good day
you could meet your love,
this is the black day
someone close
to you could die.
This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next
and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,
the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like a fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.
This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.
This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.
There is no house
like the house of belonging.
© Amy Pierce and In Spiritual Wonder, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Amy Pierce and In Spiritual Wonder with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.