where new beginning might be ripening

 

Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved 

when we place profound trust in the act of beginning. 

Risk might be our greatest ally. 

To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look

 at where we presently are, attempting always to discern 

where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening.

 There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable 

to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth

 that was not rewarded a thousand times over.

There are days when Conamara is wreathed in blue Tuscan light. 

The mountains seem to waver as though they were huge dark ships 

on a distant voyage. I love to climb up into the silence

of these vast autonomous structures. What seems like a pinnacled summit

 from beneath becomes a level plateau when you arrive there.

 Born in a red explosion of ascending fire, the granite lies cold, 

barely marked by the millions of years of rain and wind. 

On this primeval ground I feel I have entered into a pristine permanence,

 a continuity here that knew the wind hundreds of millions of years

 before a human face ever felt it.

When we arrive into the world, we enter this ancient sequence. 

All our beginnings happen within this continuity. 

Beginnings often frighten us because they seem like lonely voyages

 into the unknown. Yet, in truth, no beginning is empty or isolated. 

We seem to think that beginning is setting out from a lonely point

 along some line of direction into the unknown. This is not the case. 

Shelter and energy come alive when a beginning is embraced… 

We are never as alone in our beginnings as it might seem at the time.

 A beginning is ultimately an invitation to open toward the gifts and growth 

that are stored up for us. 

To refuse to begin can be an act of great self-neglect.

Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning.

~ John O'Donohue