I have just spent my second night in my new apartment in Asheville. My mountain home is still home, but is on the market and so I make this transition in merciful stages. After the roar of quiet out there – only wind, rain, stars and forest creatures to talk with, this move feels huge for me. I hear people walking from room to room upstairs, turning on the sink, coming and going, street noise, yard equipment, sirens. But I love the fact that there are bird songs here that I don’t hear up on the mountain, different varieties, new tunes.

After my buddies from the mountain who helped me move had left two days ago, with boxes, bags of things, misplaced furniture everywhere, I laid down on a mat on the floor, body out of gas. As my spinning mind started to settle, the first clear thought was, “How do I say thank you? How do I thank You – my Lover, my ‘Friend’” (Hafiz’s name for the one who loves and moves us)? This thought got me off the floor. Build an altar. Take a walk, put up a fresh flower, light some candles, give my heart, be sure to say clearly that I do this for You. Everything I do, I do it for You.

When Easter rolled around this year I was as sick as I have been in years, had had some big blows in plans I had been making, repressed anxiety from earlier big blows in life got out of the cage with the new anxieties, darkness rising. I felt my heart trapped in a cage, on lock down, afraid to come out and risk being hurt again. And I was very aware of a part in me who was ready to give it up, give in, live only half a life or no life. The part who has had courage and has undauntedly embraced risk all my life hadn’t been heard from in a while. She was in trouble, banished. “Shut up; go away, you’re a fool anyway.”

And so I decided to do a 40-day ritual starting on Easter Sunday. Usually the 40-day observances are for the days leading up to Easter, but this seemed good to me. Each day for those 40 I would open my rib cage, lean back, shoulders back, and offer my heart to the universe; tell the protector around my heart that we’re going to come out now. The hiding away inside this iron cage (which I could see in my mind’s eye) has run its course. And, along with this, I visualized the sad, weak and failing part of myself as a band of energy, and the courageous and trusting and strong part of myself as another band of energy, and would intend that the two of them weave together like DNA strands around my spine – each holding the other up and informing one another.

This meditation I did faithfully for 40 days. The first day when I pushed my shoulders back and opened my heart, I heard the crack physically, I’ll never forget it. My chest was full of mucus from the illness I was suffering so that the crackling in my ears was loud. And meaningful. The last day of the 40 days, certainly completely unbeknownst to me at the time I began, ended up being the first night I slept in my new apartment, May 17^th. I realized this as I was lying on the floor after my moving friends had left.

And here is the kicker. A miracle. Some magic. When moving things down from Weaverville I put just the few things I knew I would want to find immediately in one little bag – things I keep on my night stand, glasses and such. In the midst of the chaos of boxes, I set a little table right next to my pad on the floor (no bed here yet), and placed those night stand things on it, along with a lamp. It was just a few, very specific items, nothing random.

When I went into the room later in the evening, folded up on that little table under my glasses was a piece of paper with writing on it. What is this? I knew I hadn’t put it there and it looked very deliberately placed. I opened it and nearly fainted. It was a letter that I had written to the Universe maybe a year ago – prayers,  hopes, visions, dreams I had wanted to articulate clearly. I do not know where it had been all of this time, I’d forgotten. But I do know that I didn’t put it on that little table. In the mass of chaos, the one clearly deliberate thing I had done was set up that table. And that I did well after my friends had left – they had just dropped boxes and furniture anyway, didn’t touch a thing otherwise.

During my 40-day ritual I made a drawing of my heart, just spontaneously. Growing out if it were huge vines, emerging from that soft red organ like Jack in the Beanstalks vines bursting through earth. The drawing surprised me. After this little magic of finding the note on the table, I felt so strongly the love in whatever force had orchestrated that surprise; and I felt the vines of love coming out of my heart to meet it. Pull the love out of me, You Who I Love. Let it grow like a strong vine into the world.

The cards say what I know, that this transition does not promise to be an easy one. But I’m going to pour my heart into it. And I will always say thank You.

Say to the sun and moon,
Say to our dear Friend,

“I will take You up now, Beloved,
On that wonderful Dance You promised.”

~ Hafiz ~