Margins for Magic, by Molly Remer

A rite of renewal:
Step out under the sky
whether it holds thunder or sun.
Rest your hands against your heart.
Say: I am here.
I am grateful.
Open your arms to the sky.
Feel air soothe you
and wind bless you.
Say: I am radiant in my wholeness.
I am loved.
Sweep your arms down
to touch the Earth (or the floor.)
Say: I am connected.
I belong.
Settle your hands against your belly.
Say: I am centered.
I am powerful.
I am strong.
Return your hands to your heart.
Wait.
The sacred will meet you here.

We pause today in the middle of the road to listen to a mockingbird perched in a crabapple tree by an abandoned house. In clear and rapid succession, it runs through its impressive repertoire: Phoebe, cardinal, chickadee, titmouse, laser-gun, a few extra trills and beeps and back again. We stand, heads cocked and silent, to experience the performance before walking on with a smile, pausing again to inhale deeply as we pass the wild plum trees so sweet and fleeting. I have been preoccupied with projects, feeling bright, creative energy burgeon inside me as it does around me, so many things tug at the mind and ask for time, leaving my dreams restless, my eyes wild, and my mind awhirl with both pressure and possibility, a persistent urgency that calls me on and away and out of being where I am. On the way back home, we stop again because there are five red winged blackbirds, conversing by the neighbor’s pond and we circle through the grass to examine white flowers in the pear trees and to check for peach blossoms (none). I love spring in Missouri, it restores and nourishes me. It reminds me I am home. I sit with my tea listening to a distant chainsaw and the wild turkeys in their rites of spring, a light rustle of wind, and the clinking of my flattened spoon wind-chimes from years gone by. A lone crow glides in to alight on an oak tree beneath the sun. It tips back and forth briefly, wings a satin shimmer in the sunbeams and then drifts away like a black kite through the spring sunshine. I have joked that the description of my next book could be:  “I sat. I saw these things.” And, this is true, for I did, and this is my news for today.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m always waiting for the chance to get to enjoy my own life, caught up in to-dos and have-tos and taxes that are due. Something that I explored in my book, Walking with Persephone, was that we need margins for magic. We need “white space” in our lives in order to step through and into the magic of our place, our own spots in the world’s web, on this earth we all share. Something that I explore in my newest book, Replenish, is that our sense of longing is the doorway, our invitation to connect.

As I wrote in Walking with Persephone:

Some people may be looking for a series of steps to invite the Goddess in, to witness her magic, to feel her hands in their lives. I do not know how to tell you how to do this, but I do know that for me, it has not rested on intellectualizing or even ritualizing, but rather in showing up, showing up in fear, doubt, confusion, pain, joy, anger, suffering, triumph and in devotion, in listening to and seeing what is right before my eyes.

This morning dawns gray and cold again. As I step out onto the rocks, I again feel the welcome sensation of magic. It is unfailing. I felt it the first time I stepped there and I have felt it every day since. I breathe deep as I step off into the slender young maple trees, as gray as the sky and think, I need more of this. I find a hollow stump, ringed with bright moss and nestle a goddess in the leaves filling the hollow. I sit on a damp stone and this time think, how can I feel this more often? Thunder rumbles over my left shoulder and crows call to the right and the answer comes, so simple and obvious that it is clear it isn’t from me, to feel this more often, just do this more often.

This is what I will do. This is what I need.

I will rebuild my life
with a larger margin
for magic.

This year, when we returned from our annual trip to the beach, I am once again surprised by how swiftly I set aside its annual lessons, my sense of clarity and calm left behind on a distant shore as I slip right back into my old patterns, the seductive and addictive lure of overwork, of pushing too hard even when it is unnecessary overriding the voice of longing and abandoning wholeness in favor of getting it done. I busy myself with writing newsletters and answering emails, fretting over bank accounts, and low sales, stress myself out over buying plane tickets for a future trip, slide easily into irritation and teeter at the edge of tears, words sharp on my tongue, and a persistent patch of pain in the center of my chest asking for attention. I snap at my kids for daring to rest and withhold my own morning practice from myself, that which so reliably sustains and refills me. Why didn’t I wrap myself in a cloak of grace, go outside to greet the trees, kneel on the cold earth, and sing my homecoming song? Why didn’t I lie on the floor, let myself do everything I love, celebrate my returning self with warm words of welcome? If there is anything I have learned from years of practice it is that longing offers us a roadmap back home.

There is no too late. There is now. And, so, this morning, I stay under the covers and offer my prayers. I stand at the window with my hand against my heart and watch a lingering pink stripe of cloud-shrouded sunrise. I kneel and press my hands to the cold floor. I light a candle in my tiny cauldron. I make my tea and sit on the yoga mat, watching the steam rise as I sing my homecoming song, low and wavering while everyone else still sleeps. I remember that my promise is to be in devotion, not to be perfect. 

My ritual today
is to forgive myself
and to begin again
with what I have. 

There are doors that truly close, opportunities that end, and chapters that finish, dreams we must lay aside, regrets to soothe, and change to soften into. At the same time, there are knots to untie and seeds to plant, there are doors that open and rivers that flow. If you feel the pain of regret, the whispers of sorrow, the tug of longing, stop to listen. What calls to you? Now is your chance. If you still have breath, you still have time to begin again. Cast off your notions of too late or not enough time. Listen to the heart whispers and soul songs that cannot be silenced. Maybe you can’t do everything. Maybe you have to set some things down and walk away. But, there is a doorway open before you. There is something that chimes in your blood and calls to your soul. There is possibility. There is an invitation into change, into newness and discovery. If you truly want something to be different, this is your opportunity, your doorway, your invitation right now, to choose differently, to act differently, to feel differently, to invite dreams into life and prayers into being. Each life is a union of the ordinary and enchanted. You have a center of power within you. You have your own magic. Your sense of longing IS the doorway. 

Reach down, 
reach out, 
connect,
and live. 
This is your life
still to claim.