~The Beginning~

'If we become addicted to the external, our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person or deed can still. To be wholesome, we must retain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new, together. No-one else can undertake this task for you. You are the one and only threshold of an inner world. This wholesomeness is holiness. To be holy is to be natural; to befriend the worlds that come to balance in you.' ~ John O'Donohue in Spiritual Wisdom From The Celtic World.

Life is a journey, the Celtics word for journey is 'Aistear' a place of visions and dreams. This passage from O'Donohue is the perfect start for the journeying I am about to embark on through Ireland ~ a new beginning. The longing to find more of myself has somehow been connected with my desire to connect with my Celtic ancestry since I was a child. This fascination with the beautiful mystical landscape, and the history that lies bedded in the soil, has now become my new road I will soon walk on.

It is time to get back with reality after a fast paced start to the year and exposure to the tough reality of many peoples lives at the hospital for placement. To feel the touch of the clay earth with my bare feet and and smell the smoke rising from the chimney at the moment is bringing the simplicity and wholesomeness of life back. Life has hardship that can sometimes appear to mast its beauty. My experiences thus far have challenged my feelings of justice and fairness. Mediating on these feelings I have found that pain and suffering are not separate to beauty and joy. You cannot have one without the other. To live is to risk; let go of fear and experience the rawness and richness of what life serves - that is living.

Life holds its magic, and brings it forth so elegantly. Stop, breathe, watch. You will see and smile at the beauty that surrounds you.