Words delight me. Especially words like Nefilibata, a Portuguese word that literally means “cloud walker.” A Nefilibata, or cloud walker, is a dreamer- someone who allows themselves the freedom to remember that all we can see is not all there is.
Once a friend visited me from overseas. We had known each other through social media, but we had never met. I had a feeling I would like him, but I had no idea how deep our connection would be. He wasn’t just traveling- he was on something of a midlife pilgrimage. He felt like there might be changes in his professional life and his personal life, and he needed a journey to learn what was happening in his soul.
We spent time at Pacific City, surfing in the Pacific Ocean and taking kayaks up the Nesucca River. We climbed up a snowy trail to Mirror Lake overlooking Mt. Hood. We sat up sipping single malt and talking deep into the night. It was the first stop on a journey that would take him through the southwest, southeast, and ultimately winding up in Florida. But as many miles as he traveled physically, the distance he went down into himself was even greater. The courage with which he picked up the tender, fragile pieces of his life, weighed and examined them has stayed with me ever since.
He is a Nefilibata, a could walker, a dreamer. And his dreams came to pass. Upon returning home he made massive shifts in his life, shifts that worried and concerned some- shifts that made absolute sense to me.
I wrote this piece for him. And just a note on another unusual word in the piece- saorse. Saorse is a Gallic word meaning freedom.
Nefilibata
Leaving broken dreams
you came through
clouds and over
seas to see
this new land.
You have felt
the waves battling
your body, floated
through the silence
of the hills,
and held snow
cupped in hand.
You will know
the lonely heat
of the desert,
taste the Cuban
spice of the
keys and leave
a different person
than you started.
Now more alive.
More sure in
the saorse of
your deepest self.
Of course the
real adventure has
always been within.
Facing what you
have done and
what you have
become with each
small step leaning
into the hungry
darknesses and deep
joys of your
soul lifting up
your contradictions gently,
sifting through them
in the gloaming
twilight. And somehow
at the bottom
of who you
are you find
a lifting, soaring
spirit and discover
yourself Nefilibata, cloud
walker, once again.