Nothing opens the mind like the glimpse of new possibility.*
John O’Donohue

As we stand at such thresholds, life itself is commissioning us to move onto a new stage of our Becoming. Something at the core of our being is urging us forward … as surely as the onset of labour pain and the breaking of the waters commission the expectant mother to begin the process of birthing.**
Margaret Silf

The psalm declares for us,
In old age they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap^ –
And why not?;
Nature always finds a way of succeeding even against the odds,
Here Robert Macfarlane describes peering into a limestone gryke:
We lay belly down on the limestone and peered over the edge.
And found ourselves looking into a jungle.
Tiny groves of ferns, mosses and flowers were there in the crevasse –
hundreds of plants, just in the few yards we could see,
thriving in the shelter of the gryke:
cranesbills, plantains, avens, ferns, many more I could not identify,
growing opportunistically on wind-blown soil.^^

And we are nature dealing imaginatively with
the little wind-blown soil of time that we have,
More than able to overcome the resistance
and cross the thresholds we come to as we put on age;
On facing resistance, Katherine Morgan Schafler counsels:
The remedy for resistance is not discipline;
it’s pleasure.
Pleasure is an antidote for so much.
Find what brings you real pleasure and
you will find your way home to yourself.*^

We identify the things that fascinate, bring wonderment,
And satisfy our deepest desires …
To this, I would add generosity,
The drive to be a gift to others,
Without which our story would be incomplete.

*John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**Mary Ruth Broz and Barbara Flynn’s Midwives of An Unnamed Future;
^Psalm 92:14;
^^Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places;
*^Katherine Morgan Schaffer’s The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control.