~ Daring To Take A Step ~ – Sharon Mauldin

Ponderings, Poems & Practices
for Living Your Brilliance!

Dear Ones,

It’s been a rough and tumble month for me. The spur of the moment trip to empty a storage-unit of treasured belongings left me tired, overwhelmed and fearful.

Meeting myself on edges of ending and beginnings has always challenged my breath, my sleep, my thinking.   And yet, in the midst of all of that, there has been heaps of grace and flow; relief and spaciousness; gratitude and laughter.

My body remembers the panic I felt eleven years ago, after stashing things in storage and letting go of my 3500 sq ft home to move into a small camper-van in Australia . The rising panic would come at night.   “I don’t have a home.” “I don’t know what is next”. “Think of all the bad things that might happen.”

I feared being a bag lady and living out of my car. Well, there I was. Living our of a car with my things in bags!

“What is the nature of safety?”

My mantra became “You are on planet earth. This is home. You will end up exactly where you are supposed to be.”

“I am always safe. Exactly where I am is exactly where I need to be.”

And here I am again, which is why this poem speaks to me as I return to an updated version of that mantra. You are on planet earth. This is home. You ARE exactly where you are supposed to be”.

In honor of our journeys,
With love,
Sharon

If you could see
the journey whole
you might never
undertake it;
might never dare
the first step
that propels you
from the place
you have known
toward the place
you know not.

Call it
one of the mercies
of the road:
that we see it
only by stages
as it opens
before us,
as it comes into
our keeping
step by
single step.

There is nothing
for it
but to go
and by our going
take the vows
the pilgrim takes:

to be faithful to
the next step;
to rely on more
than the map;
to heed the signposts
of intuition and dream;
to follow the star
that only you
will recognize;

to keep an open eye
for the wonders that
attend the path;
to press on
beyond distractions
beyond fatigue
beyond what would
tempt you
from the way.

There are vows
that only you
will know;
the secret promises
for your particular path
and the new ones
you will need to make
when the road
is revealed
by turns
you could not
have foreseen.

Keep them, break them,
make them again:
each promise becomes
part of the path;
each choice creates
the road
that will take you
to the place
where at last
you will kneel

to offer the gift
most needed—
the gift that only you
can give—
before turning to go
home by
another way.

~ Jan Richardson