Tag: Bianca Sparacino

Infinite Possibilities

“The truth is — the amount of days we have here is actually not so large. So if you have the opportunity to wake up tomorrow, to let this world age you and weather you and meet you where you are for even just one more golden minute — I hope you show up for it.
Do as much as you possibly can with your time here.
Risk your heart.
Express.
Take care of others, leave them better than you found them.
Give yourself permission to take up space.
Be all that you are.
Love the way you hope to love, and love people on purpose, with depth and intention.
Keep rescuing those younger parts of yourself.
Forgive.
Put every ounce of your patchwork soul into this world, crack tenderness into all of its dark corners.
Stay soft, stay curious, but most importantly – just hold on to your hope.”
Hold on to your hope.

~ Bianca Sparacino ~

Not yet, but soon those small indigo Siberian squill blossoms, emerging through the snow, sheltered in against our home’s southwestern exposure. Tomorrow, March arrives as a harbinger and holder of Spring. It’s been a very, very long two months into this new year. Despite knowing more snow and a return to bitterly cold weather is likely, standing outside at dawn waiting on Walker, I feel uplifted. Its breeze is making fast work of the snow that, just a week ago, covered our yards and walks. Melts leaving puddles that freeze overnight. That cycle making for treacherous walks.

Let Sparacino’s words be the tenderness cracked into the world’s dark corners. There can never be enough tenderness, or kindness, or hope. Admittedly, for me, dosed with times of righteous outrage and bewilderment.

During COVID’s then bewildering uncertainties and isolation, I first wrote about the mixed blessing of holy grief, holy gratitude, and holy love. Here I am again, now adding outrage. Holding our hearts open in hell as the tiny and tender indigo flowers find their place alongside the still icy cold snow. A metaphor for trusting that in that space between knowing and not knowing, there exists a realm of infinite possibilities.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

The Power in a Pause

In circle work, as taught by my teachers and elder “heart sisters,” Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea in The Circle Way, knowing when to call for a pause is a practice tenet. To regather one’s thoughts or focus, to recentre to purpose, taking a deep breath or several in silence supports the moving through and forward.

my sky at sunset

So it is that after a month of walking, and another two reflecting and writing about it here, I am pausing from writing my Monday posts. I may return to posting my Friday feature photo and poems, and in fact, have one lined up for Friday. But I’ll see how it rolls. Needing my attention this month are a few projects: writing the foreward and composing poetry for an anthology of women’s leadership in education, fine-tuning my poetry manuscript for the next round of submissions to publishers, and preparing the next issue of SAGE-ING for our September 21 online publication date.

In signing off for now, and “tucking in” my reflections on the Camino, here are beautiful words that affirm who I am and how I show up in the world, evident in my recent Camino photostories. Again, one of those timely Facebook finds:

“Are you happy?
In all honesty? No. But I am curious –
I am curious in my sadness and
I am curious in my joy. I am everseeking, everfeeling.
I am in awe of the beautiful moments life gives us,
and I am in awe of the difficult ones.
I am transfixed by grief, by growth. It is all so stunning, so rich,
and I will never convince myself that I cannot be somber,
cannot be hurt, cannot be overjoyed.
I want to feel it all – I don’t want to over it up or numb it.
So no, I am not happy.
I am open, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Bianca Sparacino, Seeds Planted in Concrete, 2015
Agrigento, Sicilia

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.