by Nancy Young
Eight years ago I moved into my home that sits on piers above the water of Tomales Bay, a long skinny finger of ocean that probes inland from the Pacific, just north of San Francisco. My youngest son had just gone off to college. My oldest was beginning the gradual and tenuous reclaiming of his life after two soul-ravaging years in the grip of crack cocaine addiction. The terror and pain of his death spiral had cracked me open and compelled me to discover surrender after a lifetime of trying to control it all. These were gifts I came to appreciate over the next few years in the healing solitude of Tomales Bay.
One side of my house rested on land. Two trees, 30 feet apart along the highway, and two small bushes planted by the real estate man, were the only life spotting the desolate earth that bordered the vibrant water. The land mirrored the condition I was in.
Over the next seven years, the dirt and rock became my art studio. The water, waves, clouds and birds became my cathedral and spiritual teachers. Each year, with energy and dedication, I took one small area in the yard and turned it into a space of beauty. With pioneer spirit, I nourished myself with hard physical work in service to my inner calling. I learned about devotion and the deep pleasure of tending something you love. (On occasion, when women colleagues or friends would display their beautiful nails, I laughed. Mine were dirty, broken and rough.)
On the water side, the ever changing weather and vista fed my aliveness and into a wooed state of Being with the ability to participate in the flow. The mirror of change helped me to let go of my ego’s fearful clutching, to cultivate not knowing and trusting.
A similar transformation was taking place inside the house as walls were torn down, extended or fitted with glass until each room opened to the glistening sea. Inside and out, I was connected with that which surrounded me.
There were times in the midst of a project when I thought I was nuts to add one more thing to an already overly busy life. What was compelling me to create with such determination and ardor?
This garden is all about creativity, honoring the deep feminine and masculine energies that together create new life. A few months ago, I finished opening the one remaining room to the beauty outside its walls. The last piece of organic unfolding of my home and yard that started seven years ago was complete. Delivering Avatar in Ireland and attending the Professional Course in Germany fine-tuned my attention and my Tomales Bay playground taught me even more.
Have you ever noticed how effortlessly a crab just is its crabness, or how easy a tree is being a tree, or a raccoon a raccoon?
They don’t worry and struggle about what they are meant to be doing. They don’t pretend or try to be what they are not. They don’t agonize about what they don’t have or what the future will bring. They just are who they are.
And so, on the first day I delivered ReSurfacing on the shore of Tomales Bay, I discovered my Destiny. In rapture, this is what I wrote that night:I am bursting...with joy, with laughter, with appreciation...
with gratitude.
What a glorious day!
So many touching moments
Awareness and honesty growing before my eyes.
Such willingness to experience, be vulnerable, share.
Such appreciation for the uniqueness of each other.
I am in awe about the power of this process,
the integrity of those who came here today.
Their courage. Their heart. Their softening to the truth inside themselves.
I am in total glee about what it is like to deliver this course
here in this amazingly beautiful place that is my home.
I am thrilled with how much fun I had today, how right and easy it was to be who I am,
to be doing (being) what I did, where I did it, with whom I did it.
Magic!
Destiny!
How moving it is to discover so powerfully
what the years of preparing this sacred space was all about
The future is now. It is here.
I am so grateful!
I want to throw myself down on the ground and kiss this earth,
roll in the long grass, blade to blade,
and feel even more the space of no separation that I am in.
I want to wrap my arms around myself...
for bringing me here, to the me that I am at this moment
for listening always to that force inside me
that would not let me not live,
that would not let me compromise what was dear
to a deeper knowing I often didn’t even understand,
that would not settle
or stay trapped for long in convention
or any other’s truth
that was not my own.
Thank You!
Tonight I will sit on the deck beneath the stars
enveloped in a bear blanket
listening to the great silence filling the spaces between softly lapping waves.
Tonight I will offer tears of joy to the night.
Nancy Young, Ph.D., San Francisco, CA
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