Happy New Year!

As I write this, it is a few days before we ring the new year.  I imagine most of us are ready to say farewell to 2020. This year has been a year of emotional travel whether we left our homes or not.  We have been tested and tempered by suffering and in the stillness of isolation, a multitude of feelings have surfaced including sadness, grief, anger, and confusion. 

Yet, rising up in us is also curiosity, wonder, creativity, and hope for the promise of what the new year might bring.  2021 will be a year when the COVID-19 vaccine is rolled out.  With protection against this virus, we will begin to travel outside ourselves to new frontiers and… we will grow, we will overcome, and we will love and give love. 

To usher in the new year, I offer you a poem by John O’Donohue, For the Traveler, to honor the Traveler that each of us will be this year:

Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
 
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
 
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:
 
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
 
When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
 
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
 
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
 
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.
 
~ John O’Donohue ~

Please stay safe on your journey and… warm wishes for a Happy New Year!

Marianne DiBlasi, CPE Intern