“May your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills. When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance, May your imagination continue to evoke horizons. When the thirst burns in times of drought, May you be blessed to find the wells.”
John O’ Donahue
In a time when everyone is told to stay in, I hear an invitation to get to know our inner explorer. Pandemic or not, we all experience physical boundaries and limitations to varying degrees throughout our entire lives.
Awareness of our confinement is crucial to accepting the abundance of this human adventure.
Where is it that you are feeling trapped?
What is locked up inside you that you are afraid to bring into the light?
Are there places in your heart clogged up with disappointment, fear, or anxiety?
With the new mandates for social distancing to help decrease the spread of the virus, we all have yet another excuse to hide in our homes (literally and figuratively), to drown in our screens, to settle for social media to fill our unspoken needs, and to plunge ourselves into flimsy online connection.
In these times the temptation is to revert to our turtle behavior- seizing up, sinking into our shells, and thrusting our heads into the dark cave of familiarity, where we’ve already spent way too much of our lives.
Sure, we might be homebound for a while, but could this be an opportunity to practice some behind the scenes stripping of our self-inflicted prisons and systems of fear?
Could it be possible to use this world-wide Sabbath to be reacquainted with our wild side once again, the parts of us that refuse to be walled in?
Maybe during the hunkering down, we could take a long look at where and why we’ve been hiding our heart and keeping it hushed.
Everyone of us needs to tell our own coming out stories.
We have multiple tales of these kinds of turning points. Moments where we peek our head out, accept who we are without a hint of shame, and commit to move forward, living into our newfound courage and identity.
Your physical spaces might feel smaller and smaller these days. Your limitations might be glaringly obvious right now. But remember: your soul has always been a bit of rebel; it refuses to be squelched.
Your soul is begging you to break down the fences of fear. It longs for an ever-expanding, more colorful journey than most of us are willing to admit.
Listen, there’s a coming out story for you to snag in this season. A story of how you came home to yourself and left your shell of shyness and passivity and status quo.
The deepest, truest parts of you can never stay subdued, confined, or quarantined.
