Invitation

The most courageous journey is to the interior landscape.

Dear One,

The mystery and beauty of human experience entails walking through both joy and sorrow, yet it is the rare individual who will embrace life in its fulness. You were not meant to make that journey alone, and the therapeutic relationship is one in which hope takes on flesh and becomes both an embodied and interpersonal reality.

To be present to another human, to inquire with kindness and curiosity, and to set out to author new stories rich with possibility is the work I am most excited about. God made us unable to see our own faces, and in that we are meant to reflect, to witness, and to name the truth in each other’s lives.

You were meant for honor.

You were meant for delight.

You were meant to have your story pondered.

Your body was meant to be protected.

And yet we are all living east of Eden, searching for a better country.

The image of the tea ceremony comes to mind as a place of generous hospitality to be welcomed back home. In the Japanese version of the tea ceremony, warriors would lay down their weapons before a great battle to enter into a small room through a short door to acknowledge and honor what has been and what was to come.

My great hope is that indeed you would be welcomed back home, to yourself.

With gratitude,
Michael S. Chen

***background photo is William Zorach’s painting “Spring in Central Park”