In case you need a reminder that magic exists...here it is.
Yesterday, I woke up feeling sorta tired. I completed a huge, emotionally and spiritually deep project this week of release a book, A Journey of Light, into the world. It's been an amazing. And I'm tired.
Instead of sticking to my regular Thursday morning schedule of getting out the door at 7 AM to buy groceries for my extended family and getting back to start working by 9 AM, I gave myself a more spacious morning. Luckily, I didn't have many meetings scheduled. I allowed myself to meander through my day. And here's what happened.
I encountered magic around every turn of my slow, meandering, light-filled day.
I ran into exactly the people I was meant to run into.
I had conversations that brought me into new depths easefully.
I gained the perspective of really, deeply understanding the meaning of the book I just released. Which boils down to this: it's not about me. Yes, I gained a lot through the process of writing it. I connected with my mother, I processed a lot of grief, and I was moved into new, vitally important aspects of myself and my life.
But really, it's about what the book is doing out in the world now.
It's connecting people. To my mother and her spirit, whether they knew her or not. To their own experience of grief, whatever that looks like for them. To meaning, and purpose. To magic.
*Just a side note - magic doesn't mean everything is sunshine and rainbows. My day wasn't perfect. It was actually really frustrating in a lot of ways. What I mean by magic is...the sheen and beauty behind all circumstances, whether they feel easeful or challenging. Musings on this to be continued at a later date...
Near the end of my day, after spending time engaging in my family's spring tradition of gathering sap from the maple trees that grow on the land we tend and boiling it down into sweet, smoky maple syrup in this old saphouse, I got to experience more magic.
The actual sunshine and rainbows kind.
A rainstorm swept through the valley at the same time that the sun came out, brilliantly giving us the gift of color. In the middle of drab, brown, muddy, mucky March, at the end of a long pandemic winter of cold and snow and isolation, fear and grief and journeying, sun and rain combined to remind me of this essential truth: Slow down. The beauty, the depth, the magic that you seek is always there. It unfolds when you stop long enough to receive it.
And yes, there IS gold at the end of the rainbow. In this case, liquid gold AKA maple syrup!