Tending the Garden

From Fr. Richard Rohr, we learn the following about the hero's journey. Out of a formless, uninitiated life, there somehow comes a call for each one of us, taking the form of a longing, a loneliness, a desire, or the knowledge that there must be more, a falling apart of the game that once sustained us. This is the beginning of the hero's journey. Enlightenment is not so much knowing as unknowing. It is less learning as unlearning. It's a second chance and a chosen naïveté without losing and without forgetting the contradictions and complexities that are in between. It is more surrendering than concluding. It is more trusting than fixing, in all gratuitous grace for which we can only give thanks. All that we can do is stay on the journey to listen to its lessons, both agony and ecstasy, and ask for the most rare and crucial of gifts, which is openness, trust, and faith. These are the steps of faith: Are we willing to listen to our inner guidance to give us the information we need? Are we willing to allow ourselves to experience new possibilities and a new deepening of who we truly are? Are we willing to know that this is the year that the deepest desires of our heart really can manifest?