Soul Flow
Photo by Susan Izard
Dear Soul Friends,
After thirty-five years of living in our home, and forty years in our town, we have decided to move. For the last few weeks, I have been sorting, cleaning, packing and getting the house ready to sell.
It’s been quite a journey. I found fifty year old books in my office from freshman year in college; a photo of me when I was four dyeing Easter Eggs with my mother; an old hat box of my grandmother’s filled with antique lace collars carefully folded in tissue paper; a hand crocheted tiny black purse with a note inside that says, “In loving memory of dear Mother Burr, 1936”; and a petite black silk lace parasol that could belong to a Parisian woman in a Seurat painting.
The hat box has been passed from attic to attic over the years. My grandmother gave it to my mother who actually used one of the lace collars for my wedding dress and another one for my niece’s wedding dress. Mother was a fabulous seamstress and treasured having family items in her attic that might come in handy one day.
I’ve had the hat box for six years. I put it in my attic when my mother moved from her home into a retirement community. When I found the box tucked away in a corner of my attic the other day, I wondered if the time had come for me to let it go. I am not a seamstress and I haven’t worn antique lace since my wedding day. But my daughter loves to sew and she lives in a house that has room for an old hat box filled with family treasures. I am planning on passing it on to her and perhaps she’ll give it to her daughter someday.
Much like the stream in the photo, the journey of the hat box from one home to the next has come to symbolize my move. Every now and then our life journey takes us around another curve as we move from one era to the next. It doesn’t have to be a physical move. It can be an interior one—moving from one way of understanding to another.
One of the great spiritual traditions of soul work is to learn to settle into the flow of truth. It requires stepping away from tidy, organized lives while welcoming the flow of life. That’s when we discover that soul dwells with us through every twist and turn. Soul’s wisdom guides us in the way of loving compassion wherever we go and through all of life’s ups and downs. It isn’t always easy to rest in “flow,” especially when we are grieving or troubled. But it’s worth trying. It is in the letting go that we discover new life.
Celtic Mystic John O’Donohue wrote,
Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more importantly, it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.
As you travel through your week, may you be blessed by the rhythm of your journey. May the blessing of compassionate love encircle and surround you and give you peace.
Deep peace to you,
Susan
