For a New Beginning

05/06/2011

For a New Beginning

For those of you celebrating new change, and for those of you sooooooooo ready for new change.

What I love about this poem is how O'Donohue emphasizes the mystery of Rebirth. Few of us, at the beginning of Rebirth, received a detailed 10 year plan of how our life will unfold. Rather, it's like the very beginning of spring: new tender shoots, sometimes unidentifiable. Sunny and warm one day, snow or miserably cold rain the next.

To Rebirth:

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ John O'Donohue ~