60 Seconds for Wednesdays on Whidbey: Questioning Belonging. Where Do I Go From Here?

Hello! to you in Duluth, Minnesota.

Coming to you from Whidbey Island, Washington this is 60 Seconds, your daily dose of hope, imagination, wisdom, stories, practical tips, and general riffing on this and that.

3 ½ years on Whidbey Island and I’m still at odds with belonging. Did I choose too soon? No. There were exigent circumstances. Did I choose too foolishly? No. I’m practical with the heart of an Aquarian Dreamer. Then what? I don’t feel my identity being sculpted here. Somehow I’m still missing a sense of belonging, belonging to a place I can inhabit because I am so linked to it that to leave would be my undoing.

Now what? Well, in the time-honored fashion of others in a quandary turn to poetry and reassess. Perhaps I must, in the words of the poet David Whyte: “… begin to love all the things it’s taken me so long to love.” and begin to belong that way.

Click here to hear David Whyte recite 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 realise

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 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.” [by David Whyte]

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Production Team: Quarter Moon Story Arts

Music: Mer’s Waltz from Crossing the Waters by Steve Schuch & Night Heron Music

All content and image © 2019 – Present: for credit & attribution Quarter Moon Story Arts