Each day, a little, I realize that my old life is breaking loose and will eventually fall, in pieces, gradually. What then? My solitude is not a mere deepening of religious consciousness. What is it then? What has been so far only a theological conception: ‘Union with God!’ So mysteriously that in the end man would perhaps do anything to evade it, once he realizes it means the end of his own ego self-realization, once for all. Am I ready? Of course not. Yet the course of my life is set in this direction.

Thomas Merton

What is primary?

A new  year firmly established and begun; I find this to be the most important question I can ask myself, and ask others to ask themselves. 

What is primary? What stands at the entranceway of all I am, aim to be, and value in my showing up to a new day?

What is primary?

I am not scared of myself any more. I realize this with awe, and wonder where it came from. 

I am not scared of the shape I take; thinking it not good enough, right enough, straight enough to do the job I dream it for. 

I am not scared of the ideas in my head. Whether they are too big, too small, not mine, all mine-if only I execute.

I am not scared of my mother, my father, my sibling’s interpretation and distillation of who I am in our family dynamic.

I am not scared of my son, my son, my son, my son; his view of ‘mom’ from the place he stands into his own life following on from the start I set for him.

I am not scared of my self.

It takes a lifetime to come to such a place and I expect I’ll waver over the line many times before I am through. 

My self has done such a good job, she has. She’s shown up every day of her life and opened the gift offered every time. 

Sometimes there’ve been tears unwrapping; not what she’d wanted, not at all.

Yet even when this it all comes around.

She self finds herself waking in thanks for the day she cried. Now.

I am not scared of my self. 

For this too; opening with joy; this too. 

Days that rose with full sun and warmth, the things that satisfy and uplift from start to stop. A day, the days, like this are fewer; the preciousness of them. 

I am not scared of my self. 

There is something there that is trying to scare me without a doubt.

Something there that is scare-worthy because that line we let hook; who am I to live that self in the world 

but there; there! That’s it exactly! I am no body; I get to live this self. It is not a kingship I am enthroning it is simply a life, this self. I don’t care what the church preaches or the evangelist prescribes for healing I am not a king I am a self and I get a life and I choose to live. It is as simple as that. 

Being scared of it is life being scared of being born. 

I am not scared of my self. 

I know the author of this line meant myself not my self, but I change intentionally. To be scared of myself is something. To be scared of my self is a no thing. 

I am not scared of my self because I am my self and I choose to be who I am. I am no thing and I go on, letting my self birth.