In the beginning

Nov 9

Dear friends,

We are almost one year together on this exciting journey at Orchard. I’m filled with gratitude for all the beginnings that we’ve been a part of this year: beginning school, beginning a new job, beginning to heal, beginning to hope. As I mentioned in a recent newsletter, the cosmology of ancient religions did not understand beginnings in terms of something coming out of nothing. Rather, they understood beginnings in terms of order and diversity being made out of disorder.

Thank you for being a friend, a counsel, a patron, a prayer partner, a co-laborer in this business of creating and ordering that Orchard has been to three precious young men. You’ve filled our hearts to overflowing.

Below is a photo album of the open house that we hosted. Please enjoy.

I also want to share a blessing with you. This is a blessing written by the poet John O’Donohue called “For a new beginning” from his collection of blessings, “To Bless the Space Between Us”. May this blessing create in you a new beginning as I speak it over the young men at Orchard:

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.