A while ago I came across this quote :

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

I was astonished to see that this was a translation of Matthew 11:28-30 from The Message.  I was more familiar with the version that talked about taking a yoke upon you, which, frankly didn’t seem like much of a rest!

But those words “the unforced rhythms of grace” stuck in my mind.

"The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life."

Derek Walcott

Tears fall as I read this poem. I have lost myself. I yearn for “the stranger who was [my]self.” I wonder how I got here.

I have been on and off a spiritual path since I was 16 years old. I have read thousands of books on spirituality, had a Christian baptism as an adult, learned from Tibetan Buddhist masters, studied myriad modes of spiritual thought, practised yoga and meditation, gone on retreats, spent my life searching, searching, searching.

All I did was accumulate knowledge from external sources.

"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."

- Raymond Carver

Last Friday I was in the middle of preparations for a New Year birthday lunch and the compilation of a memory book for my daughter when I was interrupted by what was suspected to be 2 mini strokes but turned out to be a hemiplegic migraine. Instead of the plans I imagined, I found myself in an ambulance with sirens blaring speeding to hospital.

This was the theme of last year for me too. I was supposed to be at school, teaching my classes, but my health interrupted all my plans. I met this initially with resistance and when it became obvious that I had to take ill-health retirement, with grief. Life is not the way I thought it would be. I am virtually housebound and have little energy.

But I have learned so much through these so-called interruptions. I see how much of my experience came from my mind and this insistence on the way things and people ought to be. The one thing I did consistently was reject the way things actually are. This permeated every area of my life – my feelings, my relationships, my health, my body.