Read the poem
Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you
Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…
Use the selection of prompts below the poem
Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…
Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes
For A New Beginning
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
—byJohn O’Donohue
Please join in for Round 5 of Writing From The Inside Out by attending the August 2020 read-around sessions on Friday afternoons (it’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). If you have not registered, click the button below; and if you have registered, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email.
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Next Read Around is August 14, 2020 at 4:00 PM PST
My Thoughts
The beginning is more than half the whole. Aristotle
Beginnings have a special place in our heart. Although a beginning may come with a mix of feelings, it often brings a sense of hope and offers the possibility of a bright future. This is especially true if it is “A New Beginning” as described in John O’Donohue‘s poem. That little word, new, implies that this particular beginning is completely free of the past and, therefore, open to a much wider field of possibilities. And he goes on to give us this sense of expansiveness by seeing the new ground through "eyes young again with energy and dream" on a "path of plenitude" that needs no clear destination to be utterly compelling. Those lines strike that chord in all of us for adventure and rekindle the wide-eyed eagerness for life we all felt at some moment as a child.
If you think of life as a continuous flow, an argument could be made that we simply mark out certain events or occasions as beginnings. When we identify something as a beginning, we separate it out from the flow of life and consider it a catalyst for what follows. This means that the clean slate feeling and the openness to possibilities we associate with “beginning” is a mindset that is actually available at any time in life. O’Donohue suggests this very idea in the poem by describing how a new beginning has been forming inside, waiting to emerge. In other words, it is not dependent on a calendar date, or on a specific event or occasion. To me, this puts a whole new spin on the idea of a having a “beginners mind.”
Week 18 Prompt Menu
Take a tour of the out-of-the-way places in your heart and describe what is there? You can imagine is a metaphoric landscape and describe it (is it a jungle, a mountain, an seaside terrain?);
How do you know when something is about to emerge in you? This could simply be a line of poetry or the blossoming of something that has been unfolding in you for years. Describe the experience of waiting for something to emerge in you?
Describe a time when you pushed forward on something, “willed yourself on,” even though your heart was no longer in it. Or write about something you currently have, or once had, difficulty letting go even though you knew it was appropriate to do so.
Write a poem about how safety seduces you. What to you are the promises of sameness? What color are they to you?
Take any common conflict you run inside of you and describe how the turmoil “rises and relents.”
Write an ode to courage. What kindles it in you? What is it like to “step onto new ground?” Or describe a time when you were full of excitement about possibilities or, as O’Donohue says, when a path of plenitude opened for you.
Think a time when you felt excited to follow a path but did not know where it was going. Consider it both literally and metaphorically.
Write a poem about your “life’s desire. “ One way to do this is to personify your life, gives it a voice, and have it share what it desires.
Write a poem in the spirit of O’Donohue’s final verse: Awakened to adventure, my spirit…. Or: My soul senses the world that awaits me is…
Write from whatever else in the poem inspires you or from elsewhere in your life.