Expansion

It is 3 p.m. on the last day of the year--an extraor- dinary year--and I am sur- prised when I look to my left, just outside my office window, to see swollen buds, highlighted in warm afternoon sun, on the Norway Maple out front. I have lived in this house more than thirteen years, and I don't remember ever seeing this. It is a spring-like sight; it is not something I expect to see in the "dead" of winter.

But this isn't the dead of winter, is it? I forget sometimes. How everything is constantly in motion, constantly changing (and always for the better, yes?). That each moment, everything is new. All of a sudden I love this notion.

For years, decades in fact, I clung to constancy, the familiar, to sameness. "Traditions are wonderful, but so is change," I said to a friend yesterday. Today, I feel excited by the change in the air. I am not "prepared" as "usual" for the onset on this turn of the year this evening. I still have Christmas gifts to wrap, the checkbook to balance, the month's bills to pay, the inevitable disarray that accumulates during the holiday swirl yet to put in order. But it's fine, and all is well. It is different this year, and I welcome the difference. I feel myself and my life expanding beyond the edges of myself, itself, and I am not daunted, not disconcerted, but rather, enlivened and inspired.

I still don't know whether it is Love's Freeway which is leading me into this expansion, or vice versa. Either way, I know it is fair to say that I have cleared the Way for Love, and Love has rushed into and through the space I have made. And just when I think I may have mapped that terrain, it grows more broad, more deep. I find myself at the top of Cathedral Rock in Sedona, Arizona, receiving messages--infusions--from the pillars of red rock up there. The Earth has claimed me as Her own. I no longer walk upon Her, but newly realize myself as part of Her. I move like never before in concert with Her movements. No wonder my fear partway through that climb to the top was replaced by a giddy jubilance on the way back down. No wonder I feel seduced and enticed by the prospect of change, of the new, of the unknown that is coming to be, rather than unsettled by it. No wonder I am peaceful, joyful, energized, and full of Light. No wonder I find myself graced by this gift of a true love.

My beloved is in Paris tonight celebrating with friends while I do the same here in Boston. But we are not apart. We are radiant particles of Love Itself touching all in their orbit, abiding reminders of the grace, the beauty, the perfection of Love's Way. We have remembered and have acknowledged our remembering by way of our "Yes!" We have placed ourselves in the center of the River and so are enjoying the deepest, freshest water, the swiftest current, the grandest views, the greatest flow.

And the "Yes!" breeds yesses, of course. Sedona has opened the door to Love's Freeway--stay tuned for more details about that. And as I write, Love's Way is winging its way to Jerusalem. Pays Basque and Costa Rica are next, with who knows what other expansions before, beyond, and in between.

Humbled and grateful, I leave this year understanding like never before what it means to accord with Love's Way. I am reminded of the difference between trying to swim, fighting to stay afloat in the water, versus being a part of it: without movement, without resistance, the body will simply float. Resistance, panic is what makes the body sink. It gets heavy. It forces separation from that from which it is not truly separate. It creates opposition, struggle, acting upon versus acting as, of, from.

The maple buds have now lost their spotlight of sun but keep on with their shaking, their dancing in wind as if electric with the force of their own becoming...