"The Past is Passed, We Let It Go"

There's a coronation scene in my novel The MoonQuest where, as the young king-to-be prepares to receive the crown from his father, the crowd chants, "The past is passed, we let it go."

I thought about that scene yesterday when I chose to not write about the one-year anniversary of my departure from Portland. That had been my plan for the day: to revisit the circumstances that pushed me out of Portland and to reflect on the three-month emotionally and financially challenging open-ended road odyssey that carried me from the Pacific to the Mississippi and back again, before finally dropping me in Sedona.

In the end, though, it felt healthier to do what Fortas tells his son once the transfer of power is complete: "The past is not your lord," Fortas counsels Kyri (yes, that's the character my dog is named after!). "Set your sights on the future, my son, my king. Set your sights on the future by seeing to the present. Don’t, I beg, let your vision linger longingly on the past. Let it go, my son. Let it all go."

So instead of dwelling on what was, I focused on what is to be: I spent my day here in Sedona planning and setting up my next round of weekly online writing workshops – scheduling through to the end of July.

In a peculiar way, Sedona represents both my present and my past. I have lived here twice before; I have even lived on this same street before.

Living here a third time was totally unexpected. When I left Portland with no idea of where I might end up, Sedona was nowhere on the list of possibilities...or even conscious desires.

But life spoke, as it does, and here I am.

Nine months after my arrival (which, like the first time I landed here nearly 23 years ago, was meant to be nothing more than a whistle stop on the road to wherever), I am profoundly grateful to be here, profoundly grateful for all the ways I have felt supported here...and profoundly grateful to those of you (you know who you are) who believed in me enough last summer to help keep me going, when all logic (and plenty of people) suggested that I was acting foolishly and irresponsibly.

Yet then, as now, all I could do was live what I teach and write. Ignoring my intuition and inner wisdom would have been a betrayal of more than a quarter of a century of books, courses and counseling. It would also have ignored more than a half a century of miracles.

My time in Sedona has also been a time of miracles. Because I kept listening and trusting – even as the voices around me "kept shouting their bad advice," as poet Mary Oliver put it in "The Journey" – I have managed to keep moving forward, even in the midst of the uncertainty and senselessness of these times.

How? By listening and trusting. By continuing not only to write and teach but to do my imperfect human best to live what I write and teach.

As long as my heart continues to call me in that direction, that's where I will go...whatever it looks like and wherever it urges me. For now, I have workshops scheduled to the end of July (a new topic every week) and a book to finish (my long-awaited book for writers on editing and revision).

Beyond that? Who knows. I have other workshops I feel called to teach and at least five more books I feel called to write. As Erik says in my book The Emmeline Papers, "It's not about what I want. It's about what life wants from me."

My goal every day is to stay as open as I can to what that is.