Kombucha, Cash, and Conversations

Between Kombucha, Cash, and Conversations, today has been abundantly filled with a flow of all three. This outpouring of support is greater, today, than even the rain. (And for those of you currently in the Annapolis, MD area, you have an idea how much this abundant flow must be given our current non-hurricane, nearly tropical storm-like conditions for the past few days!)

A week out from departure, I am. This was energetically clear today as so many friends began touching base on any number of topics. There were four active text conversations happening on my phone (ok, I was involved; my phone isn't that smart!), and all by 8:30 in the morning. I average one to two casual ones once a day or every other day, and rarely before 9:00. I had the opportunity to catch up with people near and dear to me that live practically next door, on the other side of the country, and across the pond; a dear friend entering elderhood, a family with baby newly arrived, my wife :), another dear friend who has been an absolute rock, and friendships that are just taking root and beginning to blossom.

I am exceedingly blessed and honored to be receiving connection with all these amazing people in my life. Blessed, blessed, very blessed.

It is also sobering as it underscores the importance of this journey into the wilds. It highlights the importance of saying "goodbyes" and exchanging well wishes. The importance of clearing the slate, finishing pieces previously left undone, often for years, and of honoring the relationships and connections with our fellow human beings. From this place of connection, support, community, kombucha, cash, and conversations, I will head out into the wilds of our country's desert southwest, the wilds of communities waiting for me in those destinations, and the wilds of my inner landscape -- the deep, enveloping, welcoming places of my heart, my soul, my innermost truth.

Next week I begin, layer by layer, state by state, to drive and dive into the depths of my being. Days like today are what buoy me when fear, doubt, uncertainty, or just the "are you freaking crazy?!?" parts come calling. Days like today stand loud and tall with the part of me that knows it is time; it is time to venture out and ask to meet my deepest calling. It is time to follow the longing I've known on some level all my life, felt clearly since I was twelve, and cannot ignore a moment longer now. It is time to go meet my destiny.

Some part warns me that this sounds too tidy and neat. Another cautions that it may not happen, especially if I say it will. Others chime in.

I am reminded of Mary Oliver's words:
". . . though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
. . . You knew what you had to do,
. . . and there was a new voice,
which you slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save."

I am grateful that I hear this new voice, that I am coming to recognize it, and that I am well supplied for the journey ahead as I follow it.

I am well supplied for the coming month. More importantly, I am well supplied for the long road of integration, discernment, deciphering, and embodiment that awaits those who step onto the path of Authenticity, Death, and Dismemberment.

Thank you for your gifts of Kombucha, Cash, and Conversations. Thank you, to each of you who touch my life and whose lives I have the opportunity to touch. All of this will carry me far. These resources and connections will carry me to the edge. From the edge, I must go it alone. And from the edge, I become. I don't return. I don't come back. I become.

Become whomever I am most called to be, whomever is the fullest and truest expression of my unique facet of the Divine, whomever best expresses the unique face of Mystery that is my soul-embodied, soul-initiated self. This emergence will also happen at its own pace and in its own time. It is magical yet not the kind of magic where I will return in a month all shiny and made over! ;-) It is a mysterious magic that transforms from the inside out, just like a caterpillar's body dissolves from the inside out while curled up safely in its chrysalis.

And whatever you do, don't cut the chrysalis open, don't rush the birthing. Allow the emergence to unfold in the pace and time that only the soul's imaginal cells Know.

In a week, it begins. The rest is up to Mystery.