Morning Message From The Muse

As I lay soaking in the bath this morning contemplating some challenges I was experiencing in my life at this time I started re-reading a passage from a book I love, I will not die an unlived Life – Re-claiming Purpose and Passion by Dawna Markova.The words below jumped at me instantly providing an accurate reflection of where I may be in my process and journey at this time. The words also seemed to strike true when I tuned in and heard the voices and conversations with friends and workshop participants I have had over the last few weeks.

Their words gathered around me, humming and murmuring backdrop conversations, the kind you hear in the background of a launch party, except I could hear what they were saying clearly. Even those silent in words I felt them speak. Markova’s words this morning synthesised the essence of many of the conversations that had been had.“ There were a series of incidents that blew me over the threshold into this retreat. One was something the poet David Whyte said a friend, Brother David Steindl- Rast, told him: The antidote to exhaustion may not be rest. It may be wholeheartedness. You are so exhausted because all of the things you are doing are just busyness.

There’s a central core of whole heartedness totally missing from what you are doing.” Whyte said from that moment on everything changed for him. He realised there were courageous conversations he had to have, because his work had become too small for him.Dawna Markova, I will not die an unlived live, p21“Travelling from the known to the unknown requires crossing an abyss of emptiness. We first experience disorientation and confusion. Then, if we are willing to cross the abyss in curious and playful wonder, we enter an expansive and untamed country that has it’s own rhythm. Time melts and thoughts become stories, music, poems, images, ideas. This is the intelligence of the heart, but by that I don’t mean just the seat of our emotions.

I mean a vast range of receptive and connective abilities: intuition, innovation, wisdom, creativity, sensitivity, the aesthetic, qualitative and meaning making. It is here we uncover our purpose and passion.”Dawna Markova, I will not die an unlived live, p22We are all travellers on the same journey crossing the same bridges, walking the same roads, riding in the same vehicles. Our journey is collective, a connected circle of common and shared experiences across gender, race, age, sexual orientation and class. I needed these words this morning to remind myself not to sink beneath the washed out pale grey sky that greeted me from the office window this morning. I so wanted to wash myself away just like the sky.Instead Markova’s words gave me Hope.I hope they too offer you something as you wake and rise to greet your day.


Love from Jackee