The Ache to Experience More, or Less

Sunrise at Starry Meadows  ~ Photo by Linda Witmer

Something new is percolating. 

I'm beginning a Facebook page called Starry Meadows - the name of our farm here in Singer's Glen, Va. I probably will not be blogging as much for awhile as I launch this page and our unfolding endeavor at Starry Meadows. If you are one to 'like' pages on Facebook, check out the page:  https://www.facebook.com/rest.restore.walk.wonder/

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 Last guests here at Starry Meadows noticed the quiet. It was 4 in the afternoon with no traffic sounds, no cicadas. Oddly, there were no deer coming out to graze either. Having just shared deeply from our art and writing journals, we resonated with the deep, contented calm. Contentment and calm with a hint of disappointment. Other than birds and flowers, there were no wildlife sightings for the guests. Isn't there often an ache to experience something more: a doe stepping cautiously into the meadow, the whinny of a Barred Owl in the distance? Or something less: less chaos in the White House, less internal drama, less suffering in the world?

As our guests said goodbye and drove out our long lane, the neighbor’s family arrived and our affectionately named ‘no pond hollow’ echoed with happy sounds of playing children. Suddenly, the deer herds moved, bringing does with fawns out at dawn in our back hill’s big meadow, herds of young bucks in the neighboring quarry meadow their velvet antlers silhouetted in the sunrise, and mixed herds in the afternoon down at the creek meadows. When the deer moved, the tree frogs began singing their soothing night choruses. The rhythms of nature baffle and entice.

Last night as I prepared for sleep, anxiety crept around my edges. Like the sudden moving of the deer, my life feels stirred up. Our daughters are moving in 2 weeks, staying at Starry Meadows for a season. We’re currently renaming our studio/shop – the building where daughters will be living in while here. (This will be our future AirBnB, or retreat space, so we’re playing with appropriate names. How about Constellation House? Meadow Lark Lodge? Will our buildings be named after constellations, like Pegasus Place and Lyra Log Cabin? Naming is a sacred, joyful ritual!)  We prepare to welcome them to Virginia even as we are still transitioning ourselves. There is much to do before they come: cleaning our stuff out of the studio/shop, checking on their boarded horses, preparing for our son’s family vacationing here this week, anticipating seeing our newest grand baby again.  Then there is the North Korea threat, the unpredictable and vindictive US president, the state of our country and politics, climate change threatening this beloved earth, plus my body fighting a cold/sinus infection. Along with wanting wellness so not to infect my grand baby, I ache for smooth adjustments for my daughters, energy to enjoy my grandchildren, reassurance from our government and from God. Anxiety wants to morph into fear, like hesitant deer stepping from the security of the woods ready to bolt at the first tiny threat. I can’t control the rhythms of nature, what wildflowers or wildlife guests of Starry Meadows will see, or what experiences our daughters will encounter. Nor can I completely control my health.  

I want my grandchildren to hear the tree frogs. I want there to be children and tree frogs long into the future. I want to sleep deeply tonight. I don’t want the horses to get sick on my watch. I don’t want war or more chaos in the US. I notice all the ‘wants’ arising in me and switch my attention to the song of tree frogs. The sheets are soft below me, blanket warm above me, healing aromas of peppermint, lemon and lavender from my essential oil diffuser soothe my sinuses allowing deep, relaxed breathing. I sense my own aliveness. Outside the earth is alive, vibrant, rooted and grounded in all that is holy. Like a wild turkey hen enfolding a chick under her wing, I feel the pull of Spirit, of deep holding, of gentle Mystery. Nestled and warm, no problems exist.

As I drift into sleep, I am peace.

May you walk and sleep in aliveness and peace,

Sharon

Jesus rebuked the storm. He said, “Peace! Be still!”

Eckhart Tolle writes: “If you create no pain for yourself, then you create no more pain for others. You also no longer contaminate this beautiful Earth, your inner space, or the collective human psyche with the negativity of problem-making.”

Sunset on Big Hill Meadow at Starry Meadow - photo by Sharon 

"Soar"   The skies Starry Meadow -  Photo by Linda Witmer

When Life Gets Non-Wordy, You'll Find Me Out Back Feeding the Goats

Words fail me these days. The world around me is unfamiliar, both interiorly, and exteriorly: in physical location, family and church transitions, in political, spiritual and global changes. For the first time in my life, I’m not voraciously reading books or writing.

Let me clarify -I’m not reading and writing words on pages, I’m reading and writing words in my soul. Every sunrise brings new images and experiences, every day I sense the sudden or slow shifts in my depths. Many paragraphs of the past have been deleted, are still being erased, words written the day before, years before, while new words take shape in the pages of my heart.  I’m writing, but not sharing; I own my writing, but my writing doesn’t own me. I feel no prompting or compulsion to share, no obsession to write because of the label of ‘writer.’  

Old roles, like those disappearing words, have gone. New ones are forming. I’m aware that my identity is not in what I do, offer, say or write; I love living this truth, at the same time such dying is painful even as birthing the new is exhilarating. Plus, I’m half a hermit now, a beautiful fulfillment of a lifetime desire! Every coin as two sides and the flip side of this pretty penny is loneliness. Writing, contemplating, and seclusion are both lonely. Yet, I’d so rather be here than there, be where I am interiorly than where I was.

Though it all, something Gently Mysterious moves with me, inviting me to hold, welcome, observe life, struggle to name what is going on, struggle in the letting go, sing, and walk the dogs. 

This Mystery is very different than what I’ve felt or noticed before. I thought I lost Presence, lost my sensing of Being. But that too has simply dried up, died and is being reborn. It's not comfortable being in between, but it's freeing. 

I remember my hunger as a first year student at Kairos School of Spiritual Formation. There weren't enough days to learn everything about spiritual traditions that I had never known before. Now, as religious groups dispute-excommunicate-harden, I’m just as eager to not know anything. In the deepest deep, I abide with Spirit and Spirit abides with me, deeper than human rules and folly, deeper than theology even. In this place I am safely enfolded in Love, in Mystery, in the cloud of unknowing.

When life gets non-wordy, when my response to life is too full or too deep to sort out, I find balance noticing simple things. You'll find me out back, feeding the goats….

If video doesn't load, try this link   https://www.facebook.com/sharonjl/videos/10159060976445301/

Feeding the Goats

Like a leaf shredder

those mouths, with lips more

delicate than machine,

steadily devouring offered boughs. Maple and oak    
                        

disappear into both kinds of hungry jaws;

molars grind the same, but metal wheels

and whir of mechanical leaf shredders

miss the tickle of leafy edges

in the nostril. Nibble, munch, crunch,

mince. Is there a sound more mesmerizing

than the grind of goat molars on twigs?

More satiating than caprine mouths engulfing 

branches of leaves in sheer eating ecstasy?  With

quick upward flicks

of their heads, veined greens of chestnut, walnut

are snapped free, consumed. Twig-poked eyes,

ears, nose are of no concern. Nipping, stripping,

pulling, masticating receives full attention.

After feeding the goats, I wander down

the farm lane. Stop to tend my darling

young redbud tree. Aghast, I find

only trunk and empty stems jutting skyward, like

the spines of an umbrella stripped of fabric, holding                     

up nothing but air. This favored one, now

naked of all green-with-a-touch-of-burgundy

heart-shaped leaves.  How dare a deer snack on

 THIS tree, with an abundance of browse                                          

 everywhere? Never mind the fawn sleeping

 behind the swing so breath-takingly innocent. Or          

 does bounding fences in the dewy morning mist,

 all grace and beauty.  Indignation wants my full

 attention. Flashback. Minutes ago, goats flicking

their heads, snapping off leaves, eating their bliss,

long lashes framing  round doe eyes. Ah, the memory!

Floods my soul with pleasure.  A breeze rises, a sigh escapes

as a smile settles in my belly.  Nibble,

munch, crunch, mince. How the deer must

   have enjoyed this delicious redbud!