So… What Comes After Almost Eighty?

 So… What Comes After Almost Eighty?

I wasn't planning to start a blog.

Then again, many of the best things in my life began without much of a plan.

A few days ago, I was sitting on the balcony of a funky little motel overlooking San Francisco Bay. Below me, the tide was slowly moving out, exposing great stretches of mudflats. Beyond the water, enormous airplanes were landing and taking off at SFO.

Nature and technology.

Ancient rhythm and human invention.

The tide didn't seem particularly impressed by the airplanes.

It just kept coming in.

And going out.

I'll be eighty in January.

There. I said it.

And lately I've been wondering what life looks like from this particular perch.

I have a new mobility scooter. Four fish tanks. A husband I adore who can turn a half-block trip for a scone into a ninety-minute expedition. I make journals. I facilitate spiritual groups. I talk to my chickens. I live among the redwoods. And apparently, I am not nearly finished being curious.

I'm not interested in writing about how to age gracefully.

I'm not even particularly sure I am aging gracefully.

I want to write about what I notice.

The places Bill and I still manage to go. The things that frighten me. The things that delight me. What becomes harder. What becomes clearer. The memories that suddenly arrive after fifty years. The sacred. The ridiculous. And the small bits of goodness I might have missed when I was moving too fast.

So this is my little perch.

A place to look out at life from almost eighty and wonder…

What comes next?

I have no idea.

But I'm curious.

Source

This morning I wasn't looking for Source.

I was trying to start a new blog.

In the process, I discovered a whole graveyard of blogs I had started years ago—many with great enthusiasm and very little follow-through! I began deleting them. Six gone before breakfast.

But I looked through each one first.

And then I found this.

My Source SoulCollage® card.

I made it in 2006, twenty years ago. I had completely forgotten about it.

The words I wrote then were:

I started with the painting of the woman reaching into the stream of water, as though she is reaching for the original source of Life. Mother Mary is always important to me, as is the Buddha nature of Life.

Twenty years later, I look at this card and recognize myself.

Still reaching.
Still curious.
Still drawn to Mary and mystery.
Still following a winding spiritual path.

I am 80 now.

And perhaps that's what this new blog is about.

Not having arrived.

Still reaching.

Still curious.