Chaos of change ....

...that if one cares deeply
about something or someone
            new,
one throws a kind of energy out 
    into the world and
a 'fruitfulness' is drawn in.


I found those words on a scrap of paper - one of the many scraps of paper found as I created absolute chaos in my little apartment clearing out my workroom so Adam, my middle son, can move in for a few months.  Thank God I believe that when my heart and gut are aligned in an intention, as long as I remain open and willing, I am given what I need.  What I needed in the mess I had created was encouragement. Which was exactly what I received when the words above appeared.  Especially since they (quite literally) floated out of a book when the apartment had taken on a form of utter disorder.


By disorder I  mean nothing was where it belonged.  Or to be more accurate, things weren't where I was used to them being.  The comfortable and familiar pathways grooved into the apartment as a place of my being: working, relaxing and sleeping were now rearranged: changed; shuffled; altered - and a mess.


Openness or hospitality to change is not especially natural to human beings.  Hospitality indicates welcoming: opening the door of self to what may be new, unknown and strange. Deep within this self who is opening the door to the unknown lives a primitive creature who, upon hearing the door hinges creak, suddenly awakens and whispers danger Will Robinson - be alert: don't be too quick to think this situation is good!!  


Technically, this whispering creature is called the reptilian brain: a bit of self concerned only with survival. We human beings developed this bit of self when being eaten by wild beasts or being overwhelmed by strangers who might want our bit of territory was part of everyday life.  Those of us alive today are descendants of those persons who had a well developed reptilian brain as evidenced by the fact they lived long enough to propagate more survivors.  We carry this ancestral knowledge of survival.   


Although our bit of reptilian brain is primordial and ancestral, and although as humans we have developed well beyond it's need to be active in our everyday living, it remains ready to jump into action when alerted to major alterations to safety and security. This tiny bit of self defines safety as that which is known; familiar and comfortable.  Therefore, the unknown is to be challenged and so we are alerted to this challenge by feelings of anxiety churning up uneasiness about what is happening.


And a lot was happening within my comfortable and familiar living space.  To begin with, for three days I changed my comfortable and familiar ritual of living and after a short bit of quiet time, I threw on some clothes, put the brace on my foot and tied on my sneakers and began pushing and pulling furniture around.  I sorted my buttons back into their containers.  I pulled books off shelves and sorted them into piles of stay or leave.  I took paintings off the walls and rearranged where they live.  I pushed, my bed which for seven years has been against one wall, into a space against a different wall so I now sleep facing a different direction (not a small change to one's Spirit.)  I consolidated my altar space so it no longer sprawls across the armoir and onto the other bookcase and so now is much more compact.


Because Adam will move into what was my workroom containing thousands of buttons as well as my writing/art table and all my art supplies they also needed a new home.  Only one space existed as a possibility and that is my bedroom.  This reality was actually the most difficult to wrap my brain around because I have never used my bedroom for anything but sleeping.  Now it is a room with my buttons and button table on one side, my bed in the middle and my writing/art table on the other side.  Everything appeared strange, unfamiliar and very, very new.  


Waking up the first morning in this room arranged so very differently I knew it wasn't the 'room' itself that felt so strange - it was my sense of 'me'.  The door I opened when I said yes to this change was indeed welcoming a stranger - an unknown me. Which is why I had heard my primitive brain whispering it cautions to be alert and felt the uneasiness in my gut churn with anxiety: I was stepping into a true unknown for it was time for me to shed my old skin and grow into a new becoming.   


In order to become, one must "... throw a kind of energy out into the world"  The energy needed for fruitfulness is a willingness to enter what is not known.  And so we open the door and graciously invite this stranger of an unknown self to enter, trusting that as new ways of being are discovered and learned, a "fruitfulness is drawn in." 


Fruitfulness is such an old fashion kind of word, but it evokes an image I like: seasons evolving as sun and moon energies draw forth fruit which will ripen and be eaten.  I like the image the words have given me.  When I sit quietly, drinking in the image of trees full of spring green leaves and fruit buds sitting inside the blooms, a sensation of peaceful excitement replaces my dis-ease and I am encouraged in my yes to change.  


Actually, now that most of the disorder has settled I find that I really, really like how things look.  New space has opened up in this little apartment and what I believe is that new life will ripen and grow. Yes indeed, as the mystic Hildegarde once said, "All is well.  Yes, all may be well.


{If you are interested, the quote is from a wonderful book titled The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.   Strange title but wonderful story I can highly recommend.}