Oh, what a silly thing to do!
I give her a bracelet and her mother's painting of wildflowers, too.
Some of us flutter around sorrow like a hummingbird tapping and touching and taking, while others root down like Catalpa trees, swaying in the breeze of emotional energy. Some of us chat about job and house and stuff, while others gently dig into the gardens of their loved ones, pulling weeds, pressing seeds, and watering brittle soil. Some of us sob. Others belly laugh. Some of us drink. Others eat. Some of us run. Some of us hide. Some of us fight. Some of us freeze. Some of us stand silent and still, waiting for sun and rain and sleep. Some of us gather. Some of us are gathered. All of us grow. Some of us feel torn and frayed and afraid, while others carry thread and needles and yards of cotton cloth for mending and making patches, bandages, blankets, and jackets. Some of us hunger, while others forage and feed and feast. Some of us are joyful and fulfilled and free, while others toil with regret, ruts, and uncertainty.
Oh, how we need community!
Grandma knew this. She fed us. She gathered us. She stitched hats, blankets, and sweaters for us. She planted flowers, lettuce, and tomatoes. She tended and foraged and feasted. She rested. We remember her floating behind boats in a dark blue bathing suit. We remember her with books, photographs, and music. We remember her clam chowder and letters. We remember her prayers. Eventually, in her eighties, her hands hurt from all her stitching, knitting, writing, gardening, and gathering. And so, she was gathered. She was fed. She rested. Perhaps this is why I brought her food and flowers.
Family is a patchwork quilt. It is a three-sisters garden. It is an ecosystem. It is healthy when it is diverse - diverse in experience, diverse in opinions, diverse in ages, diverse in need, and diverse in abundance. Community is holy. It connects us like a dewy web, like forest roots, like a hive. It connects us with light and shadow. It connects us with stories. It connects us with love.
One Wednesday in June, we stand together in her church. We kneel in the pews. We sit side-by-side and sing her beloved songs. Later, we stand beneath a yellow-and-white-striped canopy while a colony of honey bees swirls above us, dancing and communing before leaving together in a spirited sweep.
Now Grandma can be a colony of bees. She can be the spider or the fern or the tree. She can be the smell of fresh bread or the salt sea breeze. She can be lines of light. She can be a song. She can be a story. She can be butterflies, ladybugs, and blue jays. She can be memory and emotion and energy. She can be a golden thread in the hem of everything.
misses my toes on her moss
misses my legs in her salt sea
misses my bottom on her stone seats
misses my belly in her breeze
misses my heart on her mountaintop
misses my face in her rain and fern and flower
perhaps she isn't broken or bleeding
angry or threatening
perhaps simply - she misses me
misses my wild open being
misses my quiet company.
I have been guided to the dark, to the early morning. Perhaps it is the cycle of the seasons, the turning and returning to the cold—the winter homecoming. Winter is a time of soft hiding, a time of being alone, and a time of gathering light and singing to the slim slips of sun every day. It is a time of candlelight, bread, soup, and stove. It is a time of evolution. A cocoon from the cold. A wide, warm womb.
Come! This dog begs me every morning. Let's go and smell and move and breathe and be! He wakes me with a language of licking. He is as black as the land and trees in the pre-dawn woods - a shadow with shining eyes. A void. A dream. Before the squirrels squirm and the birds sing, we walk. It is quiet. My breath, my boots, his pant, his paws, and the early morning traffic from the highway down the hill are all I hear. The animals sleep while the earth radiates her essence like a delicate, invisible glow, a song I can't quite hear but know is there. A joyful, soulful hum.
Sometimes songs come to me there, arriving in my belly and rising up and out of me. Simple songs. Looping ones. There is a song about slowing down and one about the ocean. There is another about my sovereignty. I record them on my phone. Place them there. Just as I might photograph something. So it becomes something I can hold. The act of recording anything tends to imprint it (an idea, image, or tune) deep within me. I suppose these songs are to share. Share with you. Share with myself many years from now.
I place them here as an offering.
Go look into the dark. You may find yourself there. And if you go there often and for long enough, you may also find a song.
You were born at 7:20 in the morning while a team of silent surgeons stood in the corner of our hospital room, their scalpels sharp and their gloved hands ready to cut you free from me so that you could breathe. I willed you out with every cell of my body and being. It was labor. Then it was bliss. The moment my body carried you to air and then to breast, I felt such relief. The weight of potential sorrow lifted, flew away on the wings of all the angels who had arrived to support us, to save us. Your birth was an ending and a beginning.
Years later, I learned that you were the invitation for my evolution.
It's time. Your soul whispered to mine.
Oh my. This is all so terrifyingly big. Can I do this perfectly? My soul begged.
Your soul hooted and hollered. HA! Absolutely not! You cannot and will not do this perfectly. And yet, in striving to be exceptional, you will become the person you seek to be. You will NOT be perfect. Neither will I. But the missteps are an earthly requirement. They are the lessons we are here to learn. But don't worry, there will also be plenty of joy and peace. We will take this time to evolve. And this stretching will set us both free. Just like your belly stretched while I slept and swam within you, our souls will stretch and eventually flow and soar. One day, you will see that motherhood first begins with you. You will learn how to mother yourself with abundant acceptance, patience, and wisdom. You will learn how to find, love, and free your inner child. And in doing so, you will learn how to find, love, and free yourself.
I have run and swam and stitched along the lines of masters, seeking to be saved. I have looked through the glass of so many glowing windows.
I am currently listening to the book The Surrender Experiment by Michael Alan Singer. On my bedside table is Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. I have recently finished Be Here Now by Ram Dass. I place this here not as a boastful pat on the back, but as a small gift for anyone looking for one. Small gifts of mention are how I find important books.
Bliss is the finish line, the ribbon to rip so that I may rest. Oil for the flame for the wick within. Soggy thoughts smother the flame. But I am here on the blessed Earth, learning. I am here to shine. I am here to burn and to be born and re-born and re-born, again, and again. I am here to sing and sob. I am here to save and be saved. I am here to be whole and holy. I am here to be being - blessed too and bright and light. I am here to remember my power and my surrender. I am here to accept the mystery and devote it all to the Divine.
I write to unravel the twine within, the tight wrap around my heart - so that it is free to feel, and free to reach empty, authentic purity.
Oh, the wild. The wild!
May you, gracious, gorgeous Mother Earth, be free to be wild.
And may you then re-wild each one of us.
There is no right. There is no wrong. Every decision is a web of steps, strings, and spectrums. There is no right decision. There is no wrong one. There are choices, often multiple, but there is no wrong way. For every way has the potential (particularly if we are looking) to lead us toward our evolution.
This here is my most recent lesson.
I have a pattern (possibly ingrained from years of traditional schooling) that if I make the correct choice, I will avoid suffering and, perhaps even, elevate to a beautiful and profound awakening.
Ohhh, I realize now. This is slippery! This is simply a striving for perfection. That isn't elevation.
Life isn't an algebra test. Life is composed of messy essays, improvised scripts, and poetry. It is solitude, reflection, and meditation. It is group work: collaboration, cooperation, and coordinated presentations. It is subjective and impressionistic. It is spectrums of light, shadow, and color.
The times I experience the most struggle, the most convoluted conflict (both inner and outer) are when I seek, claim, or defend the "right answer", rather than realizing and accepting the complexity of life, the unknowable, incalculable, uncertainty of all things. Life (and every one and every thing in it) is not stuck, stagnant, or rigid. All is flowing. All are growing. All is nuanced and ever-evolving. And whenever I attempt to collect, contain, and label any of it into tidy little boxes, I end up spending a lot of time justifying my boxes to myself and others. And when I do this, I am not available, or open to surprises, learning, and expanding. I have been trying so damn hard to answer all the questions that arrive in life correctly. Oh, how adorably naive of me! I've done this with lots of things, and eventually, what happens is that a desire, need, or realization flattens the side of a box, spilling the contents of my (sometimes) extreme choice all over the floor of my life.
Now I see that making a decision is not about getting it right, but about getting it true. It is about getting quiet and listening. It is about meeting me in the moment and (again and again) asking, What feels right to me right now? And then living with it.
I see now my progress, my slow sprint from suffering.
Be patient. My heart tells me. We all have wisdom to remember.
So I wait in silence. And I run through woods with a strong, long, loping dog.
Time whispers to us what we're ready to hear, ready to heed. This cannot happen in a hurry. It says. There are too many of you. It must be like a ripple, a sprinkly rain, a stream. It is like water, seeping into everything.
I am writing now about our spiritual evolution.
I am writing now to nudge us all into the slow sprint from suffering.
I am writing now of the love-led revolution, which starts with the remembering of inner wisdom.
Oh, you gorgeous, goddess!
The skin, the ego, is shedding! It is hanging on while you continue to slither and scrape against the rough rocks of silent awareness. Your authenticity is showing. It's so simple - be you. You don't need to be excessively, externally interesting. You are a universe - vast and full of life and light and mystery, and wisdom. There it is! It's already there within you. The world doesn't need your ego. What it yearns for is what you yearn for - simple, deep wisdom. Authenticity. Your true, calm, joy-filled soul. Settle there - live in that grounded being. Be in the moment. Yes, be just here now, as often as possible. Be right here. And stay here. When others try to drag you back or pull you forward, remain here, and stay here. Now, remain here for eternity, and you will find eternity.
When we let the fear fly? What happens when we quit the fight and commit to ascention, to flight? What if all we need is acceptance and letting go? What if we ran away and prayed all day? What if we learned how to live fully in joy and love? What if we learned that life doesn't need to be about survival but surrender? What happened to the prophecy of the poor and meek? What about listening to one's wild beast of a body and one's universal star of a soul? Why are we working so damn hard to do it "right" and "well" when that action is a distraction from stillness, silence, and our pure consciousness? Let us be barefoot in the stream and woods. Let us splash in the lake and lie on the sand. Let us eat berries in the meadow and potatoes from the farm. Let us breathe with ease, with a soft belly, a light heart, and freedom.
In all my seeking, reading, gathering, and remembering, I now know this: God is within me. God is within me, which is to say, God is within YOU. God is within everything - the plants, the minerals, the animals. Everything is divine. Everyone is divine.
When I look now at a cluster of trees, I see that they are a collection of beings, infinite and wise, stretching toward light above and connection below. They are holy. The clouds, too, floating by like boats of loose cotton, are holy! I pull off the sturdy skin of a banana, carried north to me in a crate from the tropics. It smells of sunshine and honey. It is holy. I split a speckled watermelon. It creaks open like an old door and wobbles on the cutting board. Its pink flesh sprays, while my body salivates in silent prayer. Holy! I fry an egg. Holy. I smell fragrant, floppy wildflower petals. Holy. I stand barefoot on rocks, socked in soft woolly moss. Holy! I slip my bones and skin into a cool, clean pond. Holy. The list is infinite.
I close my eyes. I imagine that I am full of light. My skin is like lantern glass, my bones are golden brass. I can see my light.
My mother is holy. My father is holy. My siblings, my children, my dog - all divinely holy. The birds, owls, and squirrels in the trees outside are holy. The mushrooms, the maples, the blue whales, the dandelions, the dragonflies, and the fireflies - all holy.
We are all holy.
We are all glowing and growing. And yes, there is mess and chaos. There is bloody gore, war, and many hungry children. Peace will eventually arrive on the warm, wide wings of the Phoenix. Until then, let us pray for the evolution of every human being. Let us pray for every single one of our spiritual evolutions. For the more humans who renounce fear and remember LOVE, the more peace and bliss will grace our world and universe.
Therefore, putting pen to paper has become less of a production
and more of a messy, loving correspondence.
I am a note. You are a note. Every moment is a chord, or a jangled collection of notes. Prime moments are harmonious, while disconnected mom...
