Some of you will know that my dear, 91yo Dad, Robert – a brave, loving, clever, gentle giant of a man – passed on last Monday evening.

Caer Wydyr

As you can imagine emotions seem to be a roller-coaster ride for me and close family. In all of this I want to thank my friends here, Celts, Christian, Druid, Pagan and others – too numerous to mention – for your kind words, thoughts, energy-sending, prayers, ritual, caim-casting etc, and for those that sat with me in the silence. It means a lot.

My heart is filled with gratitude for all those well-wishers.

It is all too easy to rush through life’s ‘judders’, upsets, disappointments and traumas, as if to try to escape them, or at least speed them up to return to normality, whatever that is. I’ve realised that ‘going through it’ is necessary, and though I don’t want to prolong the pain and heartache, neither do I want to artificially steer a course through it to quell the pain. The journey is necessary.

The journey, at this time, (just) is.

It has its own time. I’m learning something each day. It will end. But, perhaps, not just yet. Life is a mystery, and sometimes there are no easy answers. It’s then that I take comfort, and have done so, in those who send words of comfort, who verbally and in word form via FaceBook or email  sit with me, metaphorically or in actuality, for a while.

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvellous
to be understood…

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have all the answers.

Let me keep company, always, with those who say
‘Look!’ and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

Mary Oliver

The ancients had a word, hupomone, which means to ‘stay with whatever is happening’, and that is what I am doing. Not speeding through this part of the journey, nor purposely slowing it down. Just staying with it.

‘…the call is not to run away when things become challenging. Stability demands that we stay with difficult experiences and stay present to the discomfort they create in us’.

Christine Valters Paintner

In some instances, like the current event it is impossible to run away from it. But, even so, I get though each day, I grow, somethings are shaken loose, I enjoy good company, I am lifted up by others, I realise more of what it essential in life and what isn’t, I move through this experience slowly, thoughtfully, and not alone.

Dayenu.

Today, was but one day on this journey. Tomorrow, another. The Unseen Guide guides, consoles, empowers me (and you) one day at a time, and visits us in the myriad of people and events that we encounter each day. One day…it is enough.