I know what you're thinking.....
Those are some ugly-ass shoes.
And I would have to agree with you.
Erik plopped them down in front of me a few days before he left. I looked from him to the shoes and back again.
"Besides being the ugliest shoes I've ever seen in my entire life, - what - are those?" I asked.
To which he responded nonchalantly, "My shoes...that's all I wear now."
My eyebrows shot up and we started our favorite banter-of-old: "Na-uhh!", "Ya-huh!"
I slipped the shoes on my feet and instantly understood.
"Oooooh!" I said.
"I know, right?" he said. "They're like walking on marshmallows."

Many of you know that after my mission in Sri Lanka ended, I took a break from the working life. For rejuvination, and I had the sense that I needed to free myself up for something...for what I didn't know. WAIT and BE PRESENT were the two cosmic whispers that reverberated against the walls of my mind. Leo and I did some traveling, and spent lots of time at the Cape---time and space for reflection and digging in the dirt and walking the trails. My father was sick and his condition worsened through the course of last year. It became clear to me what I had freed myself up for. We got to spend time with my Dad before he died, and were there along with the rest of my family when he died. I am thankful beyond words for that time. Leo and I have been able to continue helping and supporting my family with all those things that need to happen in the months following death. Sorting, re-arranging, grieving....we've been in it all, together. I'm glad I waited. I'm glad I was home, and not halfway around the world wishing I was home.

Now, as the new year begins, I feel a new stirring inside of me, a calling forth of all that I have. MOVEMENT, the new whisper.Like the Speaking of Faith interview about Rumi from a few months back, "Just get moving....plow the earth of yourself....you will see the benefit." Thus the picture of the ugly-ass shoes. Shoes, a metaphor for movement. I'm starting to look for work, I've committed to a writing project for which I'm getting paid (!), I'm putting myself out there in all the ways I can think of....and then trusting what comes of that. Stepping into the flow has always had unpredictable and better-than-I-could-have-ever-imagined results....so here goes everything.....I put my left foot in, I take my left foot out, I put my left foot innnnn, aaaaand shake it all about....

In other news, those aforementioned shoes, and my brother finally arrived in Thailand after a day of cancelled flights and missed connections in Newark. I got a text message from E last night that he was in Bangkok, about to get on a flight to the north.

....we do the hokey pokey and we turn ourselves around
that's what it's all a-bout!