GUTS

I-25 between Santa Fe & Albuquerque, New Mexico

What’s next? I ask on the drive to Albuquerque to do some errands and attend a blogging presentation at the SouthWest Writers organization.

I’ve been in Santa Fe for 21 days now. The car is finally emptied. I’ve set in motion a weekend retreat for next month. I have teleconferences set up through March. My daughter has had her first Santa Fe visit with me. This newsletter is largely done.

Now what?

I’ve never been certain why I was drawn to Santa Fe or what being here is about for me. At first, there were all kinds of teasing cosmic synchronicities that offered up the promise of a local base for my work.

Having got me here, many of those appear to have dissolved.

And so I ask again, What’s next?

The StarQuest, I hear in response.

In contrast to its predecessor novel The MoonQuest, its first two drafts completed in a year, this sequel has been an on-again-off-again presence in my life for nearly eight.

It’s clearly no coincidence that my most recent private session was for someone resistant to working on the book she was being guided to write.

That’s the thing about this work: there’s always as much in one of my sessions or events for me as there is for the client or participants.

And so it’s not surprising to me that those two words, The StarQuest, fill me with as much dread as exhilaration.

Is that why I’m in Santa Fe? To work on the book?

The dread come from my fearful self, afraid to discover what the book has to tell me, reluctant to open to the transformation all creative acts birth. The exhilaration is the song of my heart, grateful to be heard, ready to be expressed.

I’m in Albuquerque now, stopped at a traffic light behind a silver Chevrolet pick-up. In this moment, dread is in the ascendancy. And then my eyes wander down to the Chevy’s license plate: GUTS it screams out at me in bold red capitals.

That’s what it takes to be creative, to live creatively, to create. That’s what it takes to be authentic, to live your heart’s desire.

I’m not being told I need guts, I realize as the light turns green and I follow the pick-up onto Wyoming Boulevard. I’m being reminded to access the guts I already have.

My mind does not want to write this book, even as my heart cries out its desire.

That’s a common tension on the human journey. My personality self wouldn’t have chosen to end my marriage 15 months ago, for example. But my heart knew what was in my highest good — what was in everyone’s highest good — and orchestrated the circumstances and situations that would bring that outcome to pass.

While I wait for my lunch a few moments later, I overhear an impassioned conversation about Jesus a few tables away.

In the beginning was The Word, the young woman proclaims.

And the word was with God, I hear in my heart. The word was God.

The StarQuest story, I’m reminded, already exists within the God That I Am. It’s simply waiting for me to hear it.

That’s the basis of my philosophy when I teach writing. Clearly, this teacher is still learning.