Into the Unknown

Before we get too much further into the New Year, let me wish you a Great Adventure.  For some, entering a new year evokes the thrill of beginning again: the blank slate, the white page, the reset button.   For others, it is beginning with pain, and a question of how to survive.  I'm thankful to be in a period where life is more about the former than the latter. 

However it is with you, may I offer this poem, written several years ago, when I had the chance to visit a beach in my home town on New Year's Eve.

Before leaving this home, it had been my custom to drive to Stehli's beach on New Year's Eve and watch the sunset.  With the gulls screeching and wheeling overhead, the temps usually glacial, and the skyscrapers burnished by a setting western sun, I made my peace with the closing year, and greeted the new one beginning.  A thin time, as the Celts say, when the Unseen Real pierces our earthly realities and makes its Presence felt. 

NEW YEAR’S EVE

When there is that evolution of the self that severs the previous

from what is to come, that sheds an old skin and births a new one,

with no qualms about betraying an old self, with no defenses

worth keeping, no passage worth delaying—this new self walks

toward the sun on the bay of its childhood, taking photos of light

and shadow, cold and ice, kite and cloud, feeding the gulls wheeling,

keening, scrabbling for food.  This new self bumps into its true self,

blown in on a gust of wind, and light shines as on a mother’s face.

These two selves walk along the crust of snow on water’s edge,

chatting in the cold clarity of winter, into the unknown, the unfamiliar,

tingling with beginning, in the surety of the sole possibility,

with resolute steps along the path that is the only option.

May we walk with resolute steps along the path that is our only option: the one into the future.  May the Great Adventure be gentle with you, and may it cause you wonder by the close of the year. 

With prayers and blessings from the Boatyard, Happy New Year and all best wishes for a creative 2014!