One year ago, I started my blog and talked about how hard it was to let go of known ways of being. I was letting go of my identity as a classroom teacher and church musician. A dear friend, Therese Murray, sent me a quote by Krishnamurti for encouragement. “Life is constantly knocking at our door, trying to push open our windows that we may see more; and if out of fear we lock the doors, bolt all the windows, the knocking only grows louder…We want to be secure, but life says we cannot be and so our struggle begins.”
This quote, as well as advice, support, and encouragement from friends and family have helped me on my way to developing my writing/editing/spiritual direction skills and new work opportunities. “On My Way” by Rhiannon Giddens and her partner Francesco Turrisi is a song that speaks to me right now. It illuminates our need to answer life’s knock on the door and summon up the courage to fly. Feeling affirmed of our capabilities but not knowing quite where life will take us … we are on our way!
I’m watching from my window the curtain coming down
A blue as black as morning, a silence like a sound
That rattles at the cages that hold my heart and mind
That call my name to wonder just what I hope to find
That bird so high above the fray, what should he mean to me?
His crooked song gone crazy in the swaying arms of trees
That wave to me like the hungry waitin’ for the tide
My tipping boat still hopin’ I might reach the other side
(Chorus) I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way
Lord, if you love me, keep me, I pray
A little bird is stretching out to the shimmering, shaking blue
Don’t know where I’m going, but I know what to do
I don’t know the hour that finds me in this room
Dust around my feet and still no sugar in my spoon
But I’ve only got the taste for something sweet as time
Not bottled on the table, but still hanging on the vine (Chorus)
NPR FRESH AIR 2020 Interview with Rhiannon Giddens – she talks about growing up in North Carolina, studying opera at the Oberlin Conservatory, and her love of traditional folk music.