For the last month I have been immersed in the golden liminal space of my summer holiday. With deliberation I ended the 2015 working year, beginning with an introductory period of slow mails, finalising admin, enjoying the annual visit of my grandchildren, giving my last consultation and convincing myself, clients and friends that I was really intending to close up shop. It would be the first time in ten years that I would not be working in any form or shape over the Xmas period and I was amazed to discover how hard it was to stop! But finally I downed all tools, left messages that I would be available again mid-January and firmly closed my doors to the outside world.
As I entered the buttery slow days of a Cape seaside summer, the bustle and noise of the last year dimmed and slipped away, the clock stilled and my body followed with quiet mornings in bed dozing and reading, lazy meals of summer salads, long evening moments of watching dusk fall over the blue mountains and rose pink waves of the southern peninsula, and drifting into a tranquility and silence seasoned by the humour and sweetness of my husband's companionship.
In this nowhere space all dissolves, the void expands and supports me as I rest and relax, and I heal, as we all heal when we allow ourselves to take a holiday, an archetype that our modern world no longer respects or often allows.
Now the new year beckons me from my favourite beach bench as I have taken enough time to muse on what I want to leave behind in the old year, what I wish to take with me into the new, and most importantly, what to invoke in my life. I find it is becoming ever more important to me to practice reverence, compassion, and love for all life and I hope to find the grace and the grit to do just that in the coming months.
As I depart the gloriously generous spaciousness of my summer holiday and welcome the new year ahead, I send a New Year's blessing written by John O'Donohue to you all.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.