My boat struck something deep;
nothing happened.
Waves, water, silence.
Nothing happened?
Perhaps everything has happened
and I’m standing in the middle
of my new life.
                             (from the poem “Oceans,” by Juan Ramón Jiménez)

It’s such a powerful thing to know that something is always happening. We just might not be noticing the effects right away. I have had the experience of emerging into something, thinking I made the biggest mistake of my life, and realizing I just did the most creative thing in my life: I changed my whole world by making a “mistake.” Something unplanned, something new happened, something emerged through me that was atypical, brand new, uncomfortable. And while some people are going “Wow,” I was going “Whoa…!” And those two experiences are happening at the same time.

This is happening for all the people in my life, whether they know it or not. We are emerging, changing and waking up each day, beginning a new life. Oh, what patience and understanding are necessary to allow this to happen consciously! It helps to be kind and aware and even hungry for the new. Recently, mention was made of a kaleidoscope and how the picture you see is constantly changing as it rotates. That’s how it is with configurations of people. One turn of the wheel, one rotation around the sun, and things have changed.

It is so vital to realize that if I am emerging, if love is emerging through me and it is emerging through everyone in my life, it’s not going to be how I expected it and I won’t be capable of fully understanding it or seeing all the parts. I just have to keep emerging. I need to keep allowing the substance of love that I am to come forth and be new.

In my youth I had a strong spirit of commitment to change. There was a revolutionary part of my soul that kept asking the question: “Says who?” Back then, there was the Vietnam War, the women’s movement, free love; and the Catholic Church was reverberating from the Second Vatican Council. There was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Beatles came to America. The questioning of authority was on the rise and the trust in all previous forms of leadership was challenged. While I was younger then and less worldly, that spirit has not gone away. I continue to take responsibility for my own thinking and challenge anything that doesn’t make sense. Not to be contrary but to be responsible and clear.

At one point in my life, I had an awakening experience. I’m sure most of us have asked the questions: “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” We have all had realizations that have caused us to see the world differently than we did before, and partly answered those questions. My experience was of someone saying the right thing at the right time. I was open to hear and he was speaking a language that I longed to hear. This experience was with me last night when I wrote this piece:

One day I awoke
and dreamt a dream;
not a dream of sleep and hidden meanings,
or visitors of long ago,
of lovers, strangers, family members, or old cars.
Not a dream of missing my keys
or being chased, or mysterious places.
A dream of possibility,
a vision of hope
an exciting dream of purpose filled with passion
“I have a dream!”
Those words always stir something in me;
that one day, how things could be different,
beautiful, balanced, creative.
One day I awoke and dreamt a dream
and now I awake again,
emerging into the dreamscape,
filling in the colors and fragrances of this time
no longer groggy with remnant sleep or longing
but wakened by lightning
rattling my bones and tearing away the clouds
of belief and imaginary players.
Will you join me here?
Come now. I am not waiting.
I cannot,
for this precious breath is given to me
and belongs to the One who gives it.
I must not waste a moment.

This breath and this love that is moving through me belongs to Source and is given to me. And if I am wasting time, I am violating my connection with the One who gives it to me.

This is a loving and benevolent world. And how do I know this? I am still breathing, and here, and capable of continuing to emerge and let love look like Jane Anetrini, today. In spite of all my attempts to believe otherwise. We have so often tied the thread of our life to forms and situations and we get very nervous when things change. If a friend goes in a new direction you may think the thread is broken. If your business partner is looking for beginning a new enterprise that doesn’t include you, you may believe that all is lost. Perhaps they haven’t turned their face from you. But if you have tied the thread of your life to an idea of how the partnership is supposed to look, you worry about that thread and don’t trust the space and the container and the wholesome love that built those things.

There is wisdom involved in this process and a need to keep learning. Without that, when my boat hits something deep I will think nothing happened. Oh, really? I’m now sitting in the middle of my new life.

What is new is born out of what is constant.

One day I awoke
and I dreamt a dream.

I touched something so magnificent and believed that it all could be real and it all could be true and full. It was such a blessing. And in the limited understanding I had then, I thought I understood it all. I felt the same passion in myself that I feel when I read or hear Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, words from his passionate speech: “I have a dream that one day….” Well, I have a dream that one day, that vision that I caught, I will be living it. And I will only be living it if I continue to allow things to transmute, transform, and be full of me. My dream is coming true today.

The first time I had that big dream I was only twenty-two years old. I was a girl compared to who I am now. But to tell the truth, the dream hasn’t changed much. What I know to be true is still true. I had a dream that the angelic Beings that I see every day would know who they are. I had a dream that the angelic Being that I am would know how to be in this world. I had a dream that the Being I am would be the bringer of change, the steward of change, and the keeper of what needs to be held safe, because there is holiness in this land already. Sacredness is present.

Come now. I am not waiting.
I cannot,
for this precious breath is given to me
and belongs to the One who gives it.
I must not waste a moment.

I am responsible for it. And it also belongs to the One who gives it to me.

I must not waste a moment.

I’m not looking for a new dream. I’m living this dream, letting that which needs to pass away to do so, so that the dream can live and be revealed. And I can hold a safe space for the people who are waking up to that dream. Here am I, proving out you can still walk into that dream, emerge into the fullness of who you are, see the beauty round about in the midst of the toxic world.

Let us reshape holy space by being present now, breathing our breath into it, bringing starlight into it, knowing that the very substance of our Being is a multifaceted manifestation of love. My boat struck something deep, and I am sitting in the middle of my new life.