Finding My How

There’s a whakataukī in Te Ao Māori that I love. It is this:

He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangtata.

What’s the most important thing in the world? It’s the people, it’s the people, it’s the people.

The only school assembly that I remember was one led by our headteacher, when he played us “I Am A Rock,” by Simon and Garfunkel and contasted the lyrics with “No Man Is An Island,” by John Donne.

I have fallen on the side of people. People are important to me; the emotion I find hardest to manage is loneliness. Interestingly, that fear of finding myself lonely can lead me to create those very protective walls that Paul Simon describes. I can be just as creative, just as extravagent.

My path to here has had some amazing people on it. And I am learning to redirect my creativity and extravagence and trust that path. I have a mantra of my own at the moment:

I have a deep and grounded trust that I am the right person, in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing, with the right people and with the Right Person.

The part about being with the right people and the Right Person is my latest addition to my aspirational statement. The seeds were sown, I realise now, by someone who has been important to me since childhood. My friend Lorraine, whose response to my words about being moonlight was, “The other wonder of moonlight is it is always only a reflection and radiation of the sun. Glory deferred to the source of light.” Another friend, Sue, who I met right at the start of my path with LinkedIn, consistently sows words that resonate with me in her posts every day. How do I choose an example? Perhaps something I have saved and held for just the right moment: “Counterintuitively, something about being at the quieter edge enables us to be more connected and potentially more attuned to what is happening… I suspect we need more pathfinders at the quieter edge…” Or perhaps her words to me personally: “Thank you for dropping this trove of delights into my mailbox every month, Elaine. And I love how your website is emerging - it is beautiful. Cheering you on from over here…” And then, just this week, my friend Merewyn dropped these words under last month’s words; “Well done, Elaine, what a journey you have been on, and it is amazing that now you are using everything that you have learned and are now helping others to see the way forward. Blessings to you, my friend.”I met Merewyn, along with Wendy Anne, at a time when I really needed help and didn’t know where to turn. They ensured that I knew I could turn towards them.Sometimes, the people we find have no idea that we have found them or that their words have rooted. I have listened to Paul Scanlon ever since he preached at our church conference over a decade ago, speaking on acceptance before change, being a disruptor and being different…

You can’t sing harmony alone. Harmony is the sound of unity but from difference.

Which brings me back to where I started. Am I a rock and an island, or am I a piece of the continent, a part of the main? I know that I am not an island and so finding my people and then trusting my people is a part of my how.

When I look back to the beginning of the year, and our first Moon Circle of 2025, another group of people who are important to me, I realise that I knew this on the inside before it has emerged this month on the outside. I set the intention that this year would be about knowing my light and letting it shine; it would be about balancing being self-aware and others-aware; it would be about standing in my place, the place where Earth and Heaven overlap; it would be about connection.

I am the right person, in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing…

with the right people and the Right Person.

“No man is an island, entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were:

As well as if a manor of thy friend's

Or of thine own were.

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.”

John Donne