From the look of the sun, it was some time after midday, but not quite late enough to be worried about the setting sun leaving me without some sort of light to find my way back to my vehicle. I had my phone, but no service, and by this point I had stopped the habit of looking at it, even for the time. I closed the driver's side door and looked around at a land that felt so familiar—perhaps too familiar for it being the first time visiting. For the first time in so long, I was disconnected from everything and yet more connected to everything else. A reversal. A retrieval. A renewing that led me to some sort of remembering.
I walked down stone streets, passing old cottages and horses eating the forage growing from the stone. I walked for an hour with no external map, but the internal one seemed to have direction. I was led to a single, well-worn path through a field of cows right alongside the cliffs that led to the most beautiful view of the west side of Ireland. Puffins cascaded into the waves and back into their homes. Waves brought new colors of pastels. Wildflowers that hummed in the wind.
Tears were already making their way down my face. No one to hide from, no one to perform for, no one to be something for, laid naked in my soul as the sea bore witness to me beginning to break open. I look back at this moment and know now that I was led here to this moment, to this cliff, to this veil. I always know when I am sitting close to the veil that separates this realm from the others, the tears - they just flow differently. I imagine it to be the same way they’d flow had God shown in a burning bush, something holy flowing out from me. Deep calling to deep.
For most of my life, I have heard God, in ways I could never put words to, in ways I could never really explain—or perhaps I was just afraid to because of judgment or disbelief. I’d like to say it was the world that silenced my soul over all these years, but it wasn't—it was my partnership, it was my agreeance, it was my own vow that silenced my soul. All out of fear of others. But in this moment, there was no visible other to quiet me, distract me, or pull me from why I was even there.
I stood there, being spoken to and spoken over as I questioned it all, life, existence, and the amount of pain I have carried my whole life. And in every moment in between the questions, I heard, “I sent you.” I stood at this threshold, called there to listen, having every question answered, and not necessarily by the words themselves but by the fact I heard them, by the fact that we have a Creator that still speaks, by the fact that our lives are actually meant to be intertwined in this way daily, a union from a place of wholeness. What I experienced was Union where there was no separation. I tasted a moment of heaven on earth. Connection.
I carried this moment quietly with me all of these years, barely spoken of, written into poetry to give it a place to live. It has not been until this past year that I have revisited this moment to see with new eyes, the eyes of the soul. This was the beginning of my journey to wholeness, although I did not have the words for it then. I was still in the process of waking, of remembering.
The next series I have been called to write is The Holiness of Wholeness: Embracing Your True Self and Finding Union with God.
I am going to be covering these topics as I feel led:
The Quest for Holiness, The Quest for Wholeness
The Many Parts of Ourselves
Healing from Trauma
Discovering Your True Self
The Journey Toward Wholeness
Union with God: The Spiritual Dimension
The place of nature in our Wholeness
Embracing the Sacred in Everyday Moments
Wholehearted Living as a Path to reclaiming the Kingdom
Living in Alignment
The Kingdom Within
The Kingdom to Come
Thank you for being in this space with me.
Warmly,
Lillie
I am so looking forward to these future posts. Please continue to make time to write as it blesses my soul. Thank you