A few months before the pandemic hit, I was feeling restless and antsy.

I knew I wanted to make BIG moves in my life and work, even though things were … going really well.

We had one kid at the time, our oldest was 2-and-a-half. We owned our little home in a darling neighborhood, right over the DC line, called Takoma Park, Maryland. Our in-person work in DC was booming. Sold-out classes, full client rosters, sold-out teacher trainings and retreats.

And yet, I was itching to literally OWN more of my work (in the form of having my own studio instead of teaching for someone else, even though we had the most amazing studio home in DC at Flow Yoga Center). In fact, I had just created and launched the first ever 40 Early Mornings in Fall 2019.

Sam & I would say to each other “one day, we might move out of DC for a quieter life and a slower pace in some beautiful country setting.”

I was in that strange in-between place of wanting something more, deeper, richer, truer for my life and work, and yet also wanting to be present and grateful for what was right in front of me, which included so. much. love. and. abundance. even if it wasn’t perfect.

It’s kind of — actually — exactly what this week is about in 40 Early Mornings: all at once practicing toward a deeper, richer, truer version of ourselves, our life, and our work. And yet, NOT approaching this whole thing like a self-improvement plan, which requires as a necessary and sufficient condition that the current state isn’t already …. whole and perfect just as it is (even with its imperfections, things to be healed, and inner longings).

To hold the tension of the space between these two places, I scribbled a line from one of my favorite poems onto a bunch of pieces of paper, also — funny enough — called “The Wild Geese,” but this one’s by Wendell Berry. And I hung those pieces of paper all around our house: on the fridge, in the stairway so you could see it both coming up and down the stairs, by the front door, on the bathroom mirror, taped it to my computer.

Everywhere you looked was Wendell Berry’s wisdom that helped me hold that beautiful tension:

“What we need is here.”

It’s the ultimate both/and statement.

You can want something deeper, richer, and truer. AND you can trust that you already have everything you need — all of the raw materials — within you and around you in this very moment.

It’s exactly what this Cultivate week is about in 40 EM.

This gorgeous tension.

Of course, how this story of mine ends is that Covid hit and we looked up and around (even at the Wendell Berry note) and realized that THIS was “one day.” We put our house on the market, stayed with family in the interim, and eventually relocated to the Hudson Valley, where we still live and work and love today.

And you know what? Because we “never really arrive,” I still and again have these moments of needing Wendell’s reminder. In fact, right now I’m actually living in one of those moments of holding the beautiful tension of becoming once again.

So I invite you to sit with this line today, bring it into your Loving-Kindness meditation, take it for a walk, journal about it, heck — write it down and hang it everywhere you can see, if you want! I probably will too.

May you be healthy, may you be happy, may you be safe, may you know love,
Cath

Meditation: The Loving-Kindness Meditation. Do your best. Let it be enough.

Reflection: Here’s the whole poem — take a line, whether it’s the one I highlighted or something else, and respond to it in your journal entry today.

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon

and wild grape, sharp sweet

of summer's end. In time's maze

over fall fields, we name names

that went west from here, names

that rest on graves. We open

a persimmon seed to find the tree

that stands in promise,

pale, in the seed's marrow.

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear,

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye

clear. What we need is here.

— Wendell Berry