Episode Summary
Have you ever felt like you don’t belong where you are? Where might be that place? How do you find it?
Episode Notes
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]
This is the place to thrive together. Come for the stories – stay for the magic. Speaking of magic, I hope you’ll subscribe, follow, share a nice shout-out on your social media or podcast channel of choice, and join us next time! You’re invited to stop by the website and subscribe to stay current with Diane, her journeys, and her guests, as well as creativity, imagination, walking, stories, camaraderie, and so much more: Quarter Moon Story Arts
Hey, Charlotte ~
Indeed! It’s been 3 decades of following Whyte’s work. Listening, re-listening, re-assessing, considering anew, and so on. The House of Belonging has always been one of my favs. And, because Whyte wrote it his words tell me he has been a seeker as well.
Shadow work is probably something else that’s been going on as I hold up the roof in a new community – COVID, kitty with kidney disease. What better time, eh? I tell you true I could not have made it this far but for friends like you & this BC community. I feel heard & seen here; the least I can do is take the time to let others know I see and hear them. My writing is not nearly as prolific as yours – so I also relish what I get to read just because it’s there. Be-longing ~ Diane
I hope David Whyte helped, Diane.
All the things that it has taken me so long to learn to love. That sounds like a good piece of shadow work being done. All the friends make me think of Laura Staley naming her moods – an eclectic bunch of friends, indeed.
But belonging so much that leaving would be your undoing seems a case for unhealthy codependency – at least in this life.