Welcome to this meditation,
At Home in the Transition.
Today I'd like to begin this meditation with a few thoughts on the nature,
Meaning,
And location of home that have come to me as I've been in the midst of a major life transition in which I changed homes.
The last two minutes will be a silent meditation for you and I together that will end with a chime.
You,
My fellow artists listening,
Are likely to agree that this continues to be a most bizarre,
Disconcerting,
As well as illuminating time in our lives and world.
I know when I speak of the past many months I seem to have lost a year and more.
I hear myself saying,
That happened six months ago,
Or we saw each other last spring,
But in truth it was a year and six months ago,
And the spring before last.
It all seems so fluid and hard to pin down.
Time has been tossed up in the wave of this ongoing pandemic and has altered life as we know it.
It's a radically new world as we now know it.
Like you,
I did a lot of assessing of my life and relationships to work and family and pleasure,
And then together with my partner,
Made the decision to leave a home where we'd been living and creating for over 20 years.
We moved a few states away,
Not too far,
But far enough to require a long-haul moving van.
I knew it was the end of a chapter and not just a matter of changing the scenery for a few months.
I'm not a stranger to moving.
As an immigrant to the U.
S.
,
I've known travel from a young age and spending time in different homes on two continents.
And I've moved around the U.
S.
A few times,
And so my concept of home has always been very malleable.
This time though,
The choice to relocate was particularly tough because I was leaving a place where I'd been very creative for over two decades,
And also where I'd achieved a significant measure of satisfaction and success.
So my identity was wrapped up in all that beingness and doingness.
A good chunk of my life was spent there.
The decision to move was made out of love,
Love of family,
And I wanted the change.
I was ready for new challenges and inspirations.
Still,
I struggled with questions like,
Will I be remembered?
Will my art live on without me?
Did I give enough?
Did my work make a difference?
Did I make a difference?
And in my new city,
I asked,
Where do I start?
Where is my tribe?
As a singer with my performance life shuddered,
I wondered,
Can I still do it?
And even more frighteningly,
Do I still want to do it?
Alone these questions threw me for a loop.
I didn't recognize myself asking these questions.
By and by I realized that my center was on the move.
My ground had been uprooted,
And with it my sense of home and belonging.
In the days as I was saying goodbye to my closest friends in the old town,
One of them,
A poet,
Said to me,
You're never without home.
Home is inside you.
His words went right into me like the truth tends to do,
And they often came bubbling up over the weeks and months of packing and then unpacking and establishing a new place.
Home is here now,
Right where I am,
Right in this goo.
As soon as I found my journals,
I filled a lot of the pages.
Home is inborn.
It's instinct.
It's a place,
A memory,
A feeling,
A whiff of belonging that can grow into a real longing for one's own,
For one's people,
For people period.
Inside this pandemic,
We haven't had the reflections of the home that's inside us and that we're accustomed to.
The recognition,
The affirmation,
The sense of home and of standing,
Of personal standing,
Of place and of purpose.
While I was planning our big move,
I was so keen to just get from here to there as swiftly and smoothly as possible,
To leave one place and arrive in another and spend as little time as possible in the transition itself.
But the year has had other plans for me and surely for you also.
I discovered that the transition too is a home state that provides touch points and anchors amidst the swirl of movement,
Upheaval and breathlessness and stillness and silence.
Even in a fugue state,
There can be moments of clarity and closure and openings.
And so I've come to the end of a cycle that began with a mid-pandemic choice to change my life and finds me here at the far side with the sense that one home is not more significant than another.
There is nothing to miss of the home that used to be because it's not separate from me.
I made that home what it was and the people I knew there,
They are here.
They are coming here.
They are in my thoughts and in my heart.
And as they once were not yet on my horizon until our paths crossed,
So too are all the new people who are yet to be mine,
To belong to me and my life,
To come home to me here.
Home is so very personal to each of us.
I think this truth that home exists within is the truth precisely because it feels so universal.
If I am home here,
Then I am home anywhere,
In any place or land or situation or circumstance or transition.
I invite you now to find a place where you can experience some stillness and with your eyes open or closed as you wish,
Take a few deep breaths into your chest and belly.
I'll set a timer for two minutes and then conclude with an ending chime.
And I invite you as we continue to breathe at our own pace to sit with a matter of change.
What has changed?
Who has changed?
Let us sit together inside this transition,
The in-between of then and now,
For it's ongoing,
Isn't it?
Life is one moment to another,
One beginning,
One end,
One continuum.
And when you hear me say home,
What comes along for you in this moment of this day?
Here,
Right now,
Just now,
What feels like home to you?
Where are you feeling most at home in this world?
In your mind,
In your heart,
In your body?
Where are you feeling most at home in yourself?
And for the time being,
Simply let that be.
Here we go,
Two minutes,
Taking a deep breath in and out,
Unfolding into this space within.
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