An Openhearted Autumn
Photo credit: Kayla Mravec. I took this on a recent walk through my neighborhood while contemplating this new season and living with and from a place of openhearted-ness.
Autumn has invited me to listen with an open heart. Quite suddenly this past month, several new opportunities and realizations began to fall into place. Community wise, vocation wise, and location wise, I’m finding myself simultaneously being nudged to be courageous and to surrender… to listen through exploring, connecting and creating so that I may become a more embodied, more free and authentic version of myself. The hopes and dreams that I had for myself even as recent as this past summer now feel like I’d be moving backward.
Instead, really, truly rooting myself here in this new city I’ve found myself in and reaching outward to expand my creative skills and work, community, and ways of navigating living have become my new adventure. What still blows my mind is the felt sense of liberation I feel inside and how I’m noticing the grace of possibility all around me. I’m already meeting new folks, writing more, and realizing how deeply important and central creating opportunity for stories and voices that integrate disability and empathy is for my vocation, for communities of faith, and for humanity.
A horizon of hope is welcoming me into a new day, a new beginning. While I don’t totally know the way yet, I trust that following the whispers of my heart will lead me toward life.
A Prayer for Open hearted-ness
Show me the way forward, dear Spirit.
Show me my way forward deeper still into my life and love and story.
Open my heart to Your light around me. Open my heart to Your light within me.
May each step bring me closer to You, closer to who I am becoming for the world.
I want to live with openhearted, compassionate courage, dear Spirit.
I want to hold space for stories of belonging. Bless my new beginning, dear God.
Bless this bold and beautiful heart, mind and body You’ve given me. Amen.
