Here There Be Dragons!

Image: "Dragon's Breath" By Ruth Calder Murphy

Well, I warned you... Here there be dragons!

My eight year old daughter, Keziah, was reading to me yesterday morning before school. She's reading The Hobbit for the second time. I'm delighted; it's one of my old favourites from when I was a child - and I remember reading it aloud to my own mother when I was off school with the chickenpox, also age 8... Happy days...

This time round, she's still quite near the beginning. Bilbo has just had the "Took in him" roused and is determined to go on this adventure. (Whatever it is.) There are going to be times when he wonders how and why he ever plucked up the courage to leave his comfortable Hobbit hole to go off into the unknown with a band of daredevil dwarves, where there might be bandits and goblins... and where there are most certainly dragons, because that's the whole point of the journey. Bilbo's life is about to be changed for ever, in one small step - his; out over his own doorstep, over the horizon of what he thought was possible: the horizon of his own fear.

Keziah - usually nose-in-book, often books with dragons...

Bilbo reminds me of myself. I'm always proud, when I do these slightly daft online "which Tolkien personality are you" type tests, to be told quite assuredly that I'm an elf. Or possibly, sometimes, a wizard. But I know, deep down, that I have quite a healthy inner hobbit who likes nothing better than to stay in my comfort zone, blowing smoke rings and eating multiple breakfasts. The beginning of The Hobbit challenges me to look at my own life and to see where I've allowed the metaphorical dust to settle, where my comfort zones have become more cage than castle and to think, once again, about putting on my back pack, picking up my sturdy walking stick and stepping out: Over the Horizon, beyond fear.

The following introduction and poem are taken from my book, Spirit Song, which is available to buy via my "shop" links, and is available as a Kindle download here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spirit-Song-ebook/dp/B00DWVZI0Q/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373777022&sr=1-9#reader_B00DWVZI0Q

Over the Horizon

As with so many poems, this one is the reflection of a flash of realisation. Not a realisation that fear holds me back, but the realisation that I can choose to step beyond fear. It’s a simple realisation, really - the old truth that we only live fully when we leave our comfort zones... And yet, it presented itself in this new way: “Everything worth having lies on the other side of fear”. It’s not that there’s no more fear, but that fear is, in many ways, like a horizon - a line that can be crossed.

As with all horizons, when it is crossed, a new one forms.This is a good thing - to keep on travelling, pushing forward. Not to stop because we’ve crossed a line, but to feel the achievement, recover and replenish... Then, aim for the next.

Every so often, the horizon disappears because, in our running for it, we suddenly realise that we’re flying and the world spreads out beneath us, limitless... And that is when we glimpse the potential of life beyond fear. Mostly, though, we run - or walk, or crawl - but the exhilaration is the same when we are able to look back and see how far we’ve come.

Over the Horizon

 - By Ruth Calder Murphy -

It calls me -

Something Wonderful,

Something Divine...

The Everything

that pulls at my heart and

hangs,

ripe and golden in the spaces

between thoughts...

It calls

from across the line,

over the horizon,

beyond Fear.

Bold and free,

a new Me,

I step,

strong -

the bars breaking

that were holding,

restraining -

and so I fly.

Way up high,

the horizon expands -

no more lines,

no more limits -

becoming oceans

and verdant lands,

mountains and valleys,

green forests

and golden sands.

Everything that calls my name

is here -

across the line,

over the horizon,

beyond fear.