Pierced by LOVE!

About a month ago, I picked a bouquet of flowers from my garden and brought it inside. Days later, while watering the vase, I noticed this odd flower bud. One swelling bud from my Mandeville plant pierced a nearby leaf and was held captive. Kept from full bloom. My soul saw this amazing curiosity with as much wonder as my eyes.

What are the odds of me gathering blossoms from this plant? Picking this particular blossom? What made me not notice it when picking, then notice it so deeply? My soul told me: this is not a coincidence.

But, what could it mean? Why did it touch me so? Beauty and budding life held captive by parts of itself. Symbolic. I recognize the symbolism. I’ve been in this place.

I wonder: how am I moving in the world these days? Am I holding myself captive again? Am I stifling my own blooming?  If so, what has captured me? Fear?  Busyness? Ego? One of the many other ways I unconsciously sabotage myself? Is this piercing symbolic of bigger things than me? Could it be the world’s suffering?

I felt uncertain about freeing the bud. Should I allow nature to play out, unaided?  What would happen to the bud, left this way? Would the bud come into full blossom if I freed it?  

I asked my photographer daughter, Stephanie, to come document this strangely captured bud with her camera. Together we marveled while she snapped photo after photo. Hours later, I couldn’t stand by any longer to watch the stem end of the bud swelling, while the tip turned dark, slowly dying. This freedom will not change anything except a few days of extra life for this bud. And perhaps change me. So, I gently pulled it back and out of the hole it drilled for itself through the leaf.

My gift to the world is caring. Sometimes, caring is done best by leaving me out of things. Sometimes, it involves taking action. Knowing the difference takes some fine discerning. 

Often, the listening gets distorted while pulling apart the voices clamoring for attention in my head, heart, and soul. Sometimes, I fan the confusion into quite a roar, as I don’t really want to hear that still, small, most authentic voice of Love, Sacred Spirit, God. Sometimes, I want SO want to hear that I rush to make meaning, any meaning, just to get on with it.

I did this with the bud. I rushed to see it as a sign to say YES to a role, a job, a position that would have blessed me incredibly, and blessed a few others. As I fit this meaning on for size, I felt it was some of my truth, but not my deepest truth. Go deeper.

So, I found another meaning.  The bud represents how my heart feels – pierced by the news, the constant horrible news, the images and facts that break my heart every single day. The suffering, the violence, the sorrow and suffering is too much to bear.  

Yes, yes, but there’s more. Go deeper.

Beauty also breaks my heart open. I see God in beauty. Beauty is everywhere. Even in the worst I could image, the most wretched beheading, there is courage displayed, strength, calm. Beautiful hope that I too may find courage in my deepest suffering.  This face of God is beautifully vulnerable and right there also being beheaded, one with and yet more than the human suffering. Does love, does God take away some of the suffering, bringing courage and peace?  I hope so. 

Mystery is mystery though, so I am not sure of anything, how love works, how God suffers with, how God is in us yet way more than us. I just feel the effects of love and hope.   

Today, I’m practicing giving my presentation on the theme of self –compassion for a Soul Tenders retreat.  I’m trying to articulate how much courage it takes to be vulnerable.  I’m also celebrating my brother’s and my book release of The Spacious Heart: Room for Spiritual Awakening. (see more info on main blog - upper, right corner)

 I feel vulnerable. So many are already reading what I wrote from my heart. I feel slightly naked. Some days, my guts twist and bunch with the nakedness. Some days, I soar on the wings of courage.

I have no idea how this shy, invisible, terrified-of-performing-in-front-of-anyone person got here. It took much tentative sharing of my writing, many teachers and encourage-ers, much healing, much throwing myself into the wild competition of herding trails with dogs, sheep and cows outside of my control. (The dogs I handled were only partially controlled by me since their talent far exceeded my own.) 

Happy September birthday to you too, sweet Hutch boy. I miss you so! 

Miss you too, Carey.  Cattle dogs = love! 

Much throwing myself into teaching positions from children to adults and seeing if I fell apart. (Sometimes yes but hopefully no one knew) And much wrestling with love. (Lenior, do you remember how much I feared Julian of Norwich's 'wound of love' teaching? I've come a long way, baby!) 

My deepest truth is: I am the bud.  

I am both beauty and hurt. I am courage and vulnerability. I am wildly excited for this book release and I’m scared stiff by what comes next. I wrote in secret, knowing the terror of being seen was yet to come. I celebrate release publicly while longing to go back into secrecy. I offer self-compassion to others while realizing I often have unreal expectations of myself. I let go of needing to be perfect while wishing you were, so I wouldn't have to suffer with your failings, because I care so dang much. When you hurt, I hurt. I'm learning to just let us hurt together. I am contradiction and paradox.  I am love, and ugh, sometimes I am hate. (Just writing that breaks my heart) I teach best what I am learning myself. I am teacher and student, writer and reader, sage and fool, saint and sinner.  

free at last!!!!!!!!!!

 I am both set free and held captive by love. I am beautifully human. I am imperfect and I am enough.  And so are you. Isn’t it grand?

On this, my birthday, I celebrate birth. The earth’s. Mine. Yours. The Universe.  May we all have space in our hearts to hold it all!

once free, it came into FULL BLOOM  :)

And once free, may we all come into full bloom!  Continually. Never done becoming, and perfect just as is.

giving kudos to the mother plant

Cheers!!  

Running Dogs - Poetry in Motion

The trio waits, trembling. As we fumble with lines and clips, their muscled rear ends crouch low, toes dig into the ground readying for push off, their heads point straight ahead into the softly lit expanse of grass land before them. And then, free! They blast into the meadow. The fire in their bellies is fuel enough to launch them around the field countless times.
 

Turnip, our dog- Jack Russel x Basset 

Burren, our dog- Catahoula Leopard Dog x Border Collie

A friend's dog that I'm boarding - a mix of ? x ? 

Sadie, dark and glossy with legs flung wide and a spine that almost floats across the land, runs down the west side of the fence line, turns and runs south, in the lead, always in the lead. Burren’s lean form in dappled gray pumps and stretches directly behind her. Burren moves with elegant power, made for running and also for stopping and turning on a dime. For two seconds she is neck and neck with the black wind runner, before falling behind. Turnip, short and squatty, but powerfully muscled, shaves yards off each turn to meet the other two on the straight aways. 

Two circles completed, the dogs fling themselves onto the ground, bellies on the cool earth, mouths gaping wide, tongues dragging across front legs. Their bodies glisten with morning dew, each muscle well defined, each pant sending little puffs of heat into the chilly air.  Chests heaving, hearts pounding, they gather up steam to feed the fire in their bellies.

A car horn sounds in the distance sending the three hurtling into another furious race. Sadie flies ahead, Burren cuts diagonally and Turnip races to a spot in the center of the pasture and waits. He watches for signs of Burren tiring and then starts running to meet the two. Burren slows and Turnip launches himself into a great and powerful sprint, close to Sadie, his short rear legs grab and bust the turf sending grass flying out behind him. He runs with an amazingly smooth, powerful rhythm of gathering his stubby legs under him and then flinging them out before and behind. His legs and paws are angled and stumpy, yet they move him powerfully forward. What he lacks in grace he makes up in pure will and heart for the run. Turnip pours out everything he’s got, but Sadie is still a nose ahead. Even running tag-relay, Turnip and Burren can’t catch Sadie. Sadie is sleek grace, pure poetry in motion. 


In a flat out run, Sadie’s paws reach way past the end of her nose and past her tail’s end. She is made for marathons. Burren’s reach covers less distance but she is still fast. And, dear Turnip’s little stumpy legs barely stretch past his nostrils and half past mid-tail as he catapults his body forward. He is made for powerful short sprints, for digging furiously; his will to engage the other two is the fire that ignites the competition. 

Awe is not only experienced on a mountain top, or when coming upon a gorgeous field of flowers, or in the gaze of a newborn babe. Awe is also watching dogs run free.

It's good I'm a painter of words and not a photographer because I seem to ruin every camera, I own.