Post-Partum of Start-Up

I feel as if I am losing my center, mostly as I struggle to feel anything amidst an overwhelming emptiness. 

But what a productive and successful time this has been! A conference paper for a conference with Islamic scholars has been written and submitted. Six different ‘sections’ of a curriculum I oversee have gotten off the ground with necessary technological and plenary-lecture finesse. A new class is unfolding in the work to which I have felt drawn—interreligious encounter and companionship—and a book-project of 17-years’ duration has finally arrived, hard-copy, onto our dining room table. Some re-entry bumps within my ‘real’ life have smoothed out. My beloved has relaxed a bit into this new body-focused partner, even surprising me with a book that he would hate himself but suspects I might enjoy. Many of the shared, food-oriented frustrations upon some change of habits have lessened. Differentiation-within-relation…yea. J A good sign. Mostly, I’m saddened to feel a loss of focus and writing-flow here, in this space.

Impulses of activity have arisen during these few days of rest and celebration, but I do find myself resisting another mountain of achievement and the cognitive drive to climb it. I am most attuned to some energies bubbling up to conceive some new bodywork goals. I sense a new chapter is beginning soon and decks must be cleared to attend to it, listen fully. Sitting practice has become non-existent, except for Quaker community practice. Too stationery (ary?) for my current mental chatter. Perhaps it’s time to face the monkey-mindedness with intentional calm-abiding after all.

I think I will refer to this numb space in which I find myself the post-partum of start-up. One cannot help but love the creative blessings that have arrived with such striving, but there’s a renewed sense of emptiness within as well. What had been such an intimate part of your body for so very long now has its own life outside of you. How strange it is, but how logical, to feel so very empty. Stranger still to be aware of a thanksgiving for what is, just as it is.

Blessed be.