BLESSING THE CLOSING OF A BUSINESS

A friend of mine is closing his business this week. This is a blessing to him and to all the business owners, employees, customers, suppliers ... that are encountering hardship and/or experiencing a closing-the-doors of a business.

It is so important to honor the sacredness, not only of our beginnings, but also those things that come to us through endings.

We are all so incredibly connected and affected by what we construct and so often, de-construct.

Howard

BLESSING THE CLOSING OF A BUSINESS
© 2010 Howard McQueen

Something you have loved and nourished,
this endeavor you have birthed
and tended to its needs every single day,
with all that you are, all that you possess,
and turned into a deep feeling of family,
opened the doors to share and celebrate with community,
watched it in its adolescence - flourish

Only to now see it unravel,
its doors closing.

There is this great heaviness, held in the sentiment
"closing forever"

The "You" who planned this endeavor,
way back when it was but a seed of an idea
held and cupped in your fertile imagination.

You knew back then the risks associated with a business endeavor.
You've become intimate with those risk realities:

- overhead
- cash flow

and the pressures these measurements can bring upon
the newness, the very fragile-ness of the young business endeavor.

There is a raw, disheartening quality in letting go
of this entity you and others have breathed life into,
contributed in abundance, your resources and spirit into.

A dark voice in the shadows is constantly stalking and ambushing us
with the subliminal whispering / whimpering

"you should have known how to do better and pull this off".

I AM now stepping back from the epicenter of your scene
as well as the epicenter of my scene, when my business
had to be folded and sold off back in 1996.

What we created and contributed to gathered sufficient momentum
to be birthed into this physical world. It flourished, however long it
needed to, during its time.

What is closing is not us or our spirit, or the deep well
we pulled our energy and imagination from to start the business.

This incarnation of a business we contributed to passes.

We are entitled to grieve.


HOWEVER, lets not be mixing the natural need to grieve
what is lost
with any poisonous,
false
sentiments that "we failed",
or that "we could have/should have done or known better".

Life is this grand experiment,
this vast canvass
that we can paint,
and paint over
again and again.
There is absolutely no end or finality to our artistry!

We may become humbled artists,
so ...
we paint with a new found, newly earned humility.
My humbled brush is still fresh and wet.
I keep dipping into this vast, infinite well of spirit
which I cannot begin to fathom.
There is the felt knowing that my brush will never,
ever come out of the well
DRY ...

Love you dear friend!