Like Wind Rustles

The love you need is everywhere. 

Love comes in the sound of the wind swirling leaves around your feet. There is love blowing about your dwelling place, intensely banging on windows and rattling doors. 

Wake up!  Experience the Mystery. Receive the love you need; share in the exchange.

Love comes in breezes and whistles.  Love tickles ears and teases hair, rustles foliage and stirs up wildness.....

              .... invites all to dance! 

               Or hunker down. 

Love whips around pant legs. 

            Love comes like the wind, pushing us into   

     

                     new challenges, encouraging us to lean in.  

   Croaugh Patrick, Ireland 2011 

Ireland 2011

blanket of snow on our cobblestone walk

The love you need is everywhere this day – in blizzards, gusts and sea gale, in tropical breezes 

inviting you to move 

      and change 

                        and wrap up in comfort. 

Allow the wind to rustle your soul. Allow the wind to soothe your edges. 

Nana and grand daughter - April 2012

Be one with the wind. Move with Love's Energy; blow love into the world, like bubbles, like gale force shake ups, like gentle kisses on sweet baby cheeks.  

 Be love that binds. 

Hoya "rope" plant from my friend, Lenoir

I live my life in Widening Circles

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I've been circling for thousands of years

and I still don't know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

~ Ranier Maria Rilke ~

Go Deep, Go with the Flow

Deer once again roam our hills and turkeys gather in bunches outside our windows, offering hope in imagined fawns and egg clutches. 

As I mentioned before in this blog, the farmer and I are meditatively working our way  through the book: On The Journey. 

Today's entry invites us to let go of the struggle and sink into Mystery. We hold so much, in our bodies, souls, minds. We, like most in western culture, pay more attention to our minds and thoughts. Wisdom and mystery exists deeper than the mind. 

During our discussion, I asked him about meditation and centering prayer. He answered, "It's not my thing." I asked if nature is his thing. He said yes. I laughed, saying, "Yeah, even there we are different. I like to observe or contemplate nature - you like to crash through it." So we do bird watching and trail maintenance on our property in an attempt to come together. He mentioned mindfully working in his shop; I get his description - it's similar to the way I write.

It's not easy blending our different ways of sinking deeper than our frenzied, anxious, or so-important thoughts. Opening the heart and engaging from there in our relationship to each other, to the earth, to the Divine takes effort. Like the effort it takes for him to sit with me, read, open, share as we go through this book. It's not easy for me to be patient with his non-meditating ways, or to keep up with his trail blazing. 

Imagine churches then, societies, different cultures trying to relate. Or go deeper. Ah, how easy to just live in one's head - to compare, silence, shame, accuse, blame, judge and criticize. To ignore the body's wisdom whether that body is your own, or a small part of a whole group. 

A friend and I recently discussed our similar default modes when highly stressed. We catch ourselves praying to an old white, male God and feel judged, driven, pinched rather than deeply loved. At those times we are not living in relationship and co-creating with an earthy, relational, embodied, colorful, mysterious, loving energy that we 'call' God, Christ, Divine or Spirit. When we live in our heads we ignore our bodies. We think, overthink, problem-solve, fret, get trapped in self aggrandizing, self righteousness, addictive thoughts, boredom or anguish, live totally out of our heads, rather than sinking deeper into hearts and bodies to dwell in the flow of the Beloved and our belovedness. We fail to find deeper wisdom and intuition, or meet what is holy. 

As Parker Palmer says, we have much work to do in healing the heart of our democracy. Perhaps we start with learning how to listen to our own bodies and hearts. Love what we find there, especially our belovedness. Then hold the hand of one right beside us, literally or figuratively, marvel in their belovedness and listen deeply to their experiences. Perhaps even hold the hand of a stranger. 

Like the movie we watched last week -  

Before We Go

2015 PG-13 Rated PG-131hr 35m

rated 4.4 stars

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When Brooke Dalton is mugged and misses the last train back to Boston, she's by herself in the predatory darkness of New York City. After busker Nick Vaughan comes to her aid, the two forge a connection -- which brings complications in the morning.

a surprising, gentle example of how two people can drop below their head space, and truly open, listen to each other. The movie begins slowly and takes some effort to stay with it. So very much like the reality of worthwhile human relating. 

Playing with Haikus

It’s been a long, dark winter.  The farmer and I are walking mindfully, yet with sustained effort through our transitions: the uprooting move, the death of his brother, his heart surgery with all the reflecting and recovering that comes with such experiences, the medical bills and sorting out of insurance claims. 

My psyche and soul are still navigating the past election cycle with all the division, fear and negativity, especially the unleashing of hate and disrespect towards women, Jews, Muslims and people of color. Add the uncertainty of climate change to the holding of my own whiteness, femaleness, while knowing I can never understand completely what women of color are experiencing.  

Unsettling. 

Perhaps it’s been a long dark winter for you too.

If I were writing a book, this chapter would be called The Dark Night of the Soul. So much has become obscure for me, not hopeless or joyless, rather complicated and unclear. I hold this too, and mostly trust the process. Sometimes begrudgingly, yet I find comfort trusting the Mystery when redbirds and deer sightings bring no consolation. 

If I were painting, I’d paint my soul a sapphire blue pot being stirred by Divine Fire. As Bruce, from the Virginia Department of Forestry said while gesturing toward the straw-like patches of dried Japanese Stiltgrass in our back meadow, “What this place needs is a controlled burn. You’d be surprised at all the new growth.” I instantly thought of my soul. Sure, fire burns chaff and hallelujah for new growth, but the burning feels hot and wild. 

Like erasure and emptiness.    

That said, I play with haikus and feel my barrenness easing slightly. At the end of winter, after the burn, the soul opens like warm earth receiving and releasing hardened seeds. 

Orchid

Light a candle.

Kneel. Pray for union, peace, love.

Trust the blossoming.   

Farmer's Valentine Day gift to me,
bird bath/fountain made from our old farmhouse
pump and trough

             Thirst

     Build a pump.

     Invite all thirsty souls come.

     Huddle. Drink. Quench!

Deepest Joy

CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=174698
flowers of Ailanthus altissima

Trees of Heaven, Ailanthus,  

not a glory, invasive.

Another hostile takeover,

needing removal.

Like the undesirables

rooting in my depths.

Yet, stands a grandchild, 

arms stretched, “Here, I feel so free!”

My soul holds space for joy.

Photo by son, Ryan Landis, taken the same weekend our grand daughter so grandly
expressed her freedom when ever she's at our  place.



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