departures/arrivals
so…here i sit, in incheon international airport. a few hours yet until boarding the flight which will land me back in the country i came from – a place that has felt so very far away for these past ten months. it’s quite hard to believe. the journey has been a bit on the intense side, and i’ve yet to process much of it…
we’ll say that i am relieved it’s over.
and that it has been a completely life changing expanse of time. and further, that i am so grateful to have been granted this experience, to connect with the land, the people, my family… and to have found my spiritual path as a Bahá’í, in the land where my mother’s father and their family served their faith and the people of Korea in the most inspiring of ways.
and that i now feel i understand and know the mind and heart of the Korean people with an intimacy and depth i would never have been able to access before, in my life.
and that i could be here to know my father’s sister, my 고모, and have my heartstrings pulled by her, in what would unexpectedly be the last year of her life.
that all of these things happened i can only mention a gratitude for at this moment. surely, in the months to come, as i settle back into some kind of ‘normal’ life back in the familiar terrain of the u.s. ~ yet beginning again in such new and unfamiliar ways ~ i will process these transitions a bit more, implementing and giving shape to the transformations, and the lessons still nascent and forming in my heart and soul.
❝ As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood’s dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.
Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.
To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.
Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions…For the god
wants to know himself in you. ❞
~ Rilke
