Back home by another way

Okay, I'm back. You may have wondered why it's been almost a year since I've blogged here. Lots of reasons: work - I was on a busy fixed-term contract and am now working fulltime in consulting again; home - getting settled into our home here on the hill; family - spending as much time as I can with those I love; and a huge amount of thinking and processing in my inner life that I couldn't write about.

But I'm back here. And I want to offer something to anyone who's still out there and is coming home by another way too.

I wrote this last night after lighting the candles on my altar again. I have been searching for an appropriate blessing for candle-lighting and couldn't find one, and last night this welled up.

Flame of love, heal us.
Fire of beauty, consume us.
Light of love, shine on us.
Warmth of hope, shelter us.
Stillness of peace, enfold us.

I have been finding my creative life is gradually returning: after a hiatus of many years, I am writing poems again. Or maybe that I'm putting myself in the way of poems, I don't know. But poems are coming. And they are coming mostly complete, which is really unusual for me.

In the time I've been away, "home by another way" has also become quite real in a way I didn't expect. I am learning to see God's face in the world she made, and hear her voice in places I closed my eyes and ears to in the past. I have found the truth of old, old stories and am learning to trust my heart and my instincts more than ever.

Home by another way. And yes, I'll be back.