This is Sadie, our first wwoofer of the summer season. With her permission, I want to tell you what I learned about being brave from this young musician from England. Sadie came to live with us and work on our oyster lease for a week, and no matter what opportunity our rural island life presented to her, her response was, "I'll try that." Working on an oyster farm is not easy but not hard either. Sadie said maybe it was harder to sit in an office all day than to be out in the sun and wind. I marveled at her youthful ability to keep saying yes to new experiences. We went sailing on our Bristol 29.9 named Pearl and whether she was being the foredeck hand when tacking, or taking the wheel, she always was willing to try. On our last night with us we all went to a Zazen meditation, even though Sadie had only a little experience with sitting. I think I would have balked at two 40 minutes sessions separated by a 10 minute walking meditation but she was had a smile and a yes for this new opportunity.
I said several times that I thought she was brave, and now that she is on her way back to England, I have been wondering what I meant by that. I think being brave is greeting something new with an open, rising-up feeling of possibility, rather than pulling back into timidity and apprehension of change. I think greeting the unknown as a friend instantly shifts the energy we can draw upon when we begin to enter its territory. We can feel this energy like warm sunshine when we say, "I'll try that."
The Journey Oracle cards are like a new territory. We can feel apprehensive and uncertain, or we can step out on this new path, willing to say yes to the experience of guidance from the more-than-human world.
