Sensation of Seeing

I finally found time for myself........sunrise. Perfect. I've been walking off the weight of things, stepping out of the need to reduce my life to manageable patterns. Looking instead to the intelligent patterns all around.
The love I have for this decade, this place, these people........I came here to go to hell and back, this time for healing. Who is it that will hold your head all night while you learn to breathe anew? Who takes you deep into the woods and keeps watch while you come utterly undone, then sings Amazing Grace over you for hours as you find the faith to reemerge? Who do you find beside you at the meditation retreat when the lights come up, full of that god-look glance that speaks to all the years of friendship?
I never wanted to live in California. But that's what life does - we ask for teachings, are lifted from our lives and delivered. I left a marriage one day in Portland, eleven years ago, and the next day my father died while I packed up. That night I dreamt an old medicine woman placed a feather over my heart, explaining why she had to seer it into my skin. In the morning I drove away in the rain to California.
My deepest gratitude with the gold light of morning. It's been a hell of a ride. A thousand thanks all around. It's not about becoming anything anymore - that's been worked out. Not that I have any clearer understanding of how to name what it is I do in the world. It just doesn't matter what I call it or what it sounds like to others. Weary and weathered and wrinkled, sore joints along the road now, and I'm really content with the release of all the stereotypes.

Perhaps this is the first move since I began all the movement where I am not going after something, going to be someone, after some attainment of knowledge or experience. Folding laundry for the trip, gathering sippy cups and a cache of tiny farm animals, I close out another chapter and turn slowly toward the north. One question guides my path: How may I be in service?
The Pacific Northwest is calling my name. With arms outstretched, listening carefully, I pull out the map for the journey.