an eleven year wait in heron-fashion
[Continuing from... It was time to leave networking and put trying to sell my tea books to bed. Or so I thought…]
Then, through a strange and unexpected series of events and a request from a new neighbour, Dean, I found myself sitting by myself in my static and contemplating the Eastern classic ‘The Tao de Ching’. He thought I might interpret it! Although feeling utterly unqualified to comment – I started reading and began hearing its eighty-one chapters in terms of the metaphor of tea.
'Nooooooooooo!'
By the time this draft is in print, the next in the ‘Distinguished Leaves’ series – ‘Tao and Tea ~ Distinguished Leaves Free’ will have been published. It was written over daily morning journaling and promised no immediate income. I had no funds to get it printed, no enthusiasm for collecting publishers’ rejection slips but it kept the pen flowing without using too much energy.
The manuscript, in heron-like fashion, was happy to wait. Eleven years…
Meanwhile, I learned that you could train to become Biodanza facilitator. It was a three-year course of ten weekends annually. With no income to speak of and being well over a hundred miles away, joining The London School of Biodanza seemed hair-brained but perhaps it was an opportunity I needed to spear? It promised a long-lasting career in the footsteps of my mother.
Vacillating over the funding, a member of the Biodanza weekly class with Velu-sized eyes (Velu is a cow) and a largesse of a heart quietly paid for my first weekend.
I started in October 2014 and trusted the funds would arrive somehow…
And they did, in the same kind of serendipitous way that life rolls itself out with no respect for time or space, and this morning’s reading echoes how life was beginning to live me:
‘You think to make a living from tailoring,
but then somehow money comes in
through goldsmithing,
which had never entered your mind.’
Rumi Selected Poems [Coleman Barks’ trans.]
Herons gather in colonies in the breeding season. The London School of Biodanza became my heronry, a monthly breeding ground where ideas were seeded and slowly, slowly, grew. Antony Szmierek is correct, once you’ve met the heron you may seem to be alone, but ‘You’re not alone.’
We are about to be covered in feathers... The Aviary awaits!
#heron #patience #surprise #tea