New Year's Winds of Change

Thank you for this opportunity to share in the Winds of Change. It has been a very hectic retail holiday season and I have been lagging in stamina, so I looked forward to our time together in solitude.

My spiritual resolution for 2013 is to be in Awareness, everyday ~ to experience my humanness, our shared humanity, as the spiritual beings we are, from moment to moment, breath to breath. It is in this state of attentiveness that I walked the 15 minutes from my workplace to the ferry terminal, bundled against a wintry cold, dark, Maine evening. Once at Gate 5, I waited in anticipation, sitting on an outdoor bench nestled against the south face of the terminal building, sheltered from the winds and looking out to the sea and the approaching Machigonne II car ferry.

Our time together began as I walked onto the ferry, through the warm inner corridor of the first deck, up the stairs, and out onto the second deck of the stern. As the ferry left port, I positioned myself near the doorway out of the wind, sitting on a metal hub facing west. I walked to the outer reaches of the bow and was overcome with a deep urge to share the complete experience with each of you, so I climbed the outer stairway to the top deck and my usual perch, with nearly a complete 360 degree view.

As we rode to Peaks Island, to the west was the Portland city skyline, an array of lights, yellow and white, green, blue and red, ever receding; to the north, were faint city lights, a darkened Fort Gorges, a dimly lit Little Diamond Island, and then the open sea passage around Peaks; to the east were the lights of Peaks, growing ever brighter with our approach; and to the south were huge oil tanks luminescent in the night, the squat Spring Point Lighthouse decorated in two tiers of white Christmas lights, the steady, rhythmic flash of Portland Head Light in the distance, the pale, snow-covered House Island, and the open sea.

It is the sky that I am so drawn to, and on this dark, cold, windy night riding with all of you on the top deck, I watched the overturned Little Dipper spilling into the Big Dipper to the north; protector Orion standing watch over Peaks and the the seven sisters - the Pleiades; and Cassiopeia sitting proudly in the south, all among an array of heavenly, luminescent bodies, ours and the sky's.

As we were docking, in the frigid sea, there were seagulls, white in the light of the ferry,  paddling away from the mother ship. We debarked and walked the serpentine back road, listening to the crunch of footsteps and the wind sighing through the woods, our way lit only by intermittent street lights and the stars. 

Once home, I lit a votive candle of Our Lady of Fatima and a stick of Awareness incense, then turned on Tom Kenyon's Worlds Ascending and prepared an organic butternut squash to bake, the preheated oven warming the kitchen. As the Winds of Change was ending, I lay down, knees bent, on the carpeted living room floor, basking in the presents of all of you. 

Namaste.