What is greening in your life?
May 12, 2022
On this day, three years ago, I was walking the Camino de Santiago in the Spanish spring. My pilgrimage began with a snow storm over the Pyrenees, but as I walked west towards Santiago for six weeks the earth slowly burst into life all around me.
One icy-cold morning, I was captured by the striking vitality of new vine leaves growing out of gnarled, old root stock. The re-appearance of new life out of such dead looking wood seemed miraculous to me.
Later, the sun warmed my back as the wind rippled tiny waves of new wheat in the fields next to the path where I walked. I found my mind dwelling on Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century German Benedictine abbess, mystic, visionary, composer whose spiritual eyes saw Veriditas - the divine greening of things everywhere around her.
The origins of this word may be a combination of the latin words for True and Green. The deep poetry of this union points to the creative life-force at the heart of all reality, always waiting to burst forth.
On this day, I sensed rather than understood that this greening was reflecting something that was going on in me. The emergence of spring around me seemed to quietly but exuberantly announce to me that I was entering a second spring in my life, in my late 30's. My life back home in New Zealand had been feeling somewhat stale and stuck and I felt amazed at the freshness that whispered to me everywhere I looked.
I returned home to a bright and cold winter in late June 2019, full of change energy. In the three years since I have been living through a time of rapid growth and change.
I met my lovely man, Gareth, and our lives have been weaving together for two years now. After some big financial hits during COVID, I have been transitioning my working life towards spiritual direction, coaching and music. I'm using my communications skills to support people and organisations who work in the arenas of psychological or spiritual growth. I shared a new collection of songs in people's home around the North Island in 2021. I'm hoping to record my second album next year. I have planted a new garden.
All of this growth has been wonderful and at times hugely uncomfortable. I have learned that tensions are part of new life emerging and have to be held creatively and patiently.
Part of this newness, is a desire to create more, to write more, and to share more. So, in this bi-monthly (ish) e-newsletter you can expect to hear musings, poems, songs, updates along with some fertile questions that might shine a light on whatever is going on within you.
On this website, you'll find information about the various ways I am working with people these days - in spiritual direction, transition coaching and website design. Please feel free to get in touch if any of them seem to call to you.
Arohanui and autumn blessings,
Kathryn
Fertile Questions for Pondering
What is greening in your life right now?
What feels stale or stuck in your life?
Where do you hear whispers of change? Hints of new life emerging?
