She is Sacred

I'd spoken with Grandfather several times and so was able to understand Grandmothers intent and references because of that. In this ceremony I came upon a glittering turquoise galaxy. I let it pull me in, and brought this story back with me.

In the dark interior of the forest, stories were being told to convince the Daughter of Life to enter.

"She will need protection", he whispered, speaking of her being unsafe with terror all about. "Follow me", he said, "I'm the hunter, the brave, the strong protector".

Listen girl, Grandmother says, her walking stick touching the land in rhythm with her will that you remember. You are lied to, terrified by lies, seduced by false witnesses who would love you by protecting you from danger. You are in no danger. That is enough now. Grandmother says, that is enough boy, she is not harmed. She is loved. Behaving like a child wandered off into the dark, whispering of cruelty and attack, of murderous intent........... enough boy.

Grandmother says, you are loved boy, she does love you. Your stupid lies designed to lead her into the need of your protection, are told because you think by your mistake, you were cast by your Grandfather out into the wilderness. Grow up boy. Your nightmare is your own doing. So you whisper to my sleeping daughter of her un-safety. She ate the apple all right, at your urging, your lies the serpent, your terror dreams the demon snake. She is not harmed, she is not diminished, she is not violated, she is clean. As pure as love is, as perfect as her creation by God.

Grandmother says to her, here me now child as I call to you, your family is here in the valley of Life. A feast is laid on your behalf and all your ancestors are here. Your family is strong. Turn and walk into the light, there is nothing to fear. You are loved and welcome at home. There is no mark upon you, you are clean. Nothing you believed while under the spell of a nightmare has touched, or could ever hide the brilliance of your spirit. Turn girl, take the dress of your purity back, it's laid here in clear sight. Worry not for your so called protector. He who says he is black or white or red and has special medicine, who says he is stronger than the tribes of other forests dark and fearsome.

Grandmother says, turn girl toward home. Follow the deer trail, the animal paths toward water and believe not you need hunt them for food, or guard your children from their sharp claws. Call the eagle girl, call bear and owl, call wolf and salmon. Lay not your so called protectors stories before your eyes when you meet them. Stand up girl, shake off the lords of death meant to frighten you into submission that you might be used for pleasure, used for pain.

Grandmother says, oh my love, my child, let me into your heart and mind, hear my voice in the wind calling you home. You need not challenge the lie, just come home child. You need not in anger protest how you've been used. Leave that to your Grandfather, whose wisdom will clear all seeming debts. Come home child, bathe with me in the river while I sing of your beauty till you remember. It is not and never was a question girl, your beauty is true now and always has been. Let me sing for your remembrance of the truth about yourself.

Leave the lies to Grandfather girl, his children will find you and point the way toward home. Listen to the spirit of their words, and be not deceived by the seeming color or form of the messenger. The eagle of Heaven, of this valley of Life, is in the sky above you now girl. Look for blue sky, for peace, through the gap in the forest canopy. Hold to the vision of peace till it expands and you begin to feel safe.

Shut out the voice of fear that would enclose you in the forest dark. Do not listen. Do not take some small vision of safety back into the nightmare to be debated, doubted, fought over and ruined. Let your vision of peace, of clear sky, grow in your breast as a child does seem to grow in your womb. Look up girl, see the manifest power of heaven in the eagles flight and follow. Keep peace before you as you would read North by the rising Sun.

You speak to your child girl, and let no voice of violent dark intrude. Call to me girl, your Grandmother is as strong as the ocean, as fierce as the lioness, and once begun will let no lie divert your path home. You are accompanied upon every step.

Grandmother says,
and you boy, lay down your shield, set by your weapons and with a trust to which you are unaccustomed walk behind her. Hinder not her voice, for her song of happiness and reunion will set the balance true. Her forgiveness is the gate through which you must pass to regain this valley in peace. Stand not before her, lead her no more.To the degree you attempt in vain to block her path and vision of peace, so will you suffer by your own choice. Here the cry of the raptor boy, your Grandfather is here, his ancestors are upon the earth before you now, and shall grow in your womb to repair the balance as you find your way home.

Grandmother says to her, this is a journey of return girl, a return from the land of the dead, where terror and pain are glorified as purpose. To protect against them is what's called life in the dream. They're sought as motivation, as if they nourish your spirit, and where against all struggle are bowed to in an ending you believe to be real and so name death.

Grandmother says,
listen boy, she is no bitch to be mounted and used to increase your ideas, by giving you pups to bend to your will and so follow in your ways". If you don't like being compared to a beast then quit acting like one. If you're peaceful and seek no vengeance upon any tribe of the earth, then you are a man and cannot be offended, having no defenses, for you have no enemies to defend against.
By what right then do you claim the first place in counsel, while your son sits in wait to take your place and your wife and daughter are left to clean your house, prepare your meals, mend your clothes and tend your garden".

By what right. All you chiefs of any tribe or nation, do you listen only to the counsel of women who tread the ground of your ideas, your vision, following the path of your choosing through this world?
I say again, by what right. Show me where it is written in the heart and soul of humanity of your supremacy, your right, and I do mean show me. Get you up off the battlefield and carry to my valley the proof of your right to make of the earth a slaughterhouse. Show me your justification, hold it up to the light in mine eyes.

Grandmother says, You've taken great care, using every method imagined to justify a warring heart to your wife and daughter, telling them you strike on their behalf, and that you revenge their violation by your murderous enemy.

She was not defiled boy, she was never harmed, she committed no sin, she was not taken from her family, nor were her children ever taken from nor denied her. But you have seen it you say, you have the proof of your own eyes that she was beaten and raped and her children murdered with her. You have pictures, memories, a lock of hair and a grave sight to visit, and If not by your enemies, you say you carry the proof writ on your own heart, for by your own hand was it accomplished.

Grandmother says, listen child, bring your proof, your pain, your sin or need for vengeance home. Speak of it no more.
So sure are you that it is the truth, why then ask that another hear of it. Bring it to me. Have the dignity to keep your mouth shut and frighten your children no more, nor enlist them on your behalf to meet out the vengeance you are so sure is deserved. Believe you that upon the earth you are forgotten? That what you perceive in the nightmare you call your life is unknown in heaven, that God stands powerless and unaware of your plight, that the creator of all life knows not the condition of his own child? As if maybe he just got carried away and created so much he lost track of you personally and even forgot this world and so left it unattended. Listen child, have you, in your bad dream, your nightmare, ever forgotten your children, forgotten their face, their name, or even that they exist? Have you? Or do you not say that all this pain so carefully guarded is on their behalf. Each detail carefully remembered that they might be avenged.

Your love for your family, however twisted it has become, does it not rest still at the center of your thoughts? Is not the love of your family what you desire most and fear you have lost or allowed to be taken from you, because you could not protect them in what you call life and in the end must lose to death. You needn't pretend you are not in pain, but you can shut up about it. You will not be left behind if you quietly follow the song of peace as your wife and daughter lead their family home. Come now boy, follow behind them, bring your pain and terror with you and when you arrive show them to your Grandfather. Leave them dark and vicious as they are and offer them as proof to me. You will not be denied entrance to the valley for carrying such dark feathers home. Your family, whose love you sought, believing it was lost, will forgive you and upon their forgiveness will the memory of pain drift away, to reveal what you thought it denied you.

Grandmother says, you are loved my son and you are welcome here, she always loved you, never needing an excuse, and she was not wrong to love you, only mistaken in following you into the dream. Your mistake we'll discuss when she's forgiven you, for until she does you but try to find your way home with eyes blinded by tears of pain and sorrow. A mind clouded by the guilt of your inability to protect those whom you said you could, from enemies, from death, from God who in his busy schedule forgot to look after a few precious things, like this world, let alone your family. One day soon now your sons and daughters will ask for peace only, will ask for an end to war and stories of battle. They will claim their sacred right to be heard, to be listened to, and allowed by you chiefs and kings and presidents of every tribe and nation to live in peace. If you cannot give them your blessing, trust and faith, then at the very least do not stand in their way. You're not commanded to follow them by some overwhelming force willing to punish by death your unwillingness with weapons against which you cannot defend.

"Neither then command them thus. You will not be drug along on pain of death where you are unwilling to go, to do what you are unwilling to do. Neither then threaten them nor imprison them, on their choice to follow the path of peace. If they agree to let you bleed and die upon the battlefield, can you not let them go their way in peace. If you would not hear them speak of peace, then do not force them to hear your justification for war.

Grandmother says, shall we not just let those who would bleed do so, or must you who choose peace retain the right to punish your brother for his choice, and isn't that expression the acting out of some idea of justice, of war?"

If you would choose the path of peace then stay on it. If you would arrive where it leads, exact no punishment from those who choose another path, for as you do so, you are no longer on the path to peace, but only follow those whom you thought to let go their way so that they might hear your condemnation.

Shake off the nightmare now, just let it go. Look around you, listen till you hear a song for peace being sung, one that does not contradict itself by opposing war, and only allow it it's voice, even if you choose not to follow.

Let peace gather her own children to her breast, snarl and spit and show your teeth if you must, but let her pass. She is not alone. She is lead upon each step, her sisters are strong and do hold her hands, her family is strong and calls her name upon the wind, she is expected, her arrival is assured and life does quietly surround her. Any moment now she will open her eyes, see who walks beside her, and she will not despair for who remains behind for awhile.

Say it boy, for Gods own falcon is flown above her, his cry did pierce the night, and she in peace, in a clear blue sky, did follow the eagles flight into the rising sun. She does choose to believe the promise spoken into her heart, that here upon love shall her brothers remain, and so she wove their feathers into her hair, knowing by the presence of their feathers that they too will be along soon. Proud now as the valley comes into view, of her brothers strength, who wait to see with a patience born of eternity, that until the last give up the battlefield of their own free will, they will not be left blinded, without a vision they might still choose.

She can here them now calling Her name, joining their song to her own.

Listening...

As I was gardening and communing with the life in the yard where I live, I opened up to a tree who lives here too. It's in the lower garden above the green belt and provides shade through the summer for the hidden garden there. It's branches reach high and then spread and drop almost to the ground, forming an umbrella of shade beneath it thats perfect for rhododendron's, azalea's, hasta's and all the shade loving plants. It's down a narrow winding path that looks like a game trail rather than a foot path, so no one really goes there except me.

The tree is some kind of false plum, and while it doesn't produce any fruit, during the spring it's completely covered in delicate white flowers about the same time the plums and cherries are also blooming. When it happens it's a huge gift, a few weeks of beauty capable of shaking people up, and waking people up with feelings of amazement for the beauty of nature. It would be a great time to talk to people about the person-hood of the tree, when it's gifts and expression are literally in full bloom.

I was talking to the tree, relating my wish to prune it in certain places to improve my view of the lower flower garden from the deck of my apartment. I was asking if I could shape the tree. I didn't need to do it for food, or any survival type of need, and so I felt a little nervous about asking permission to sculpt the living space around me. Sometimes I prune plants and trees because I think it's valuable for awakening a sense of beauty in those human persons who live there, and who have trouble seeing the beauty of chaotic growth. I feel like if they can appreciate the beauty of the landscape they'll behave differently towards it, see it more deeply, and hopefully relate to it with more consciousness and courtesy. I also love to work together with the living green as a partner by gently shaping it.

I've spent most of my time in the city, and it's shaped in many ways how I relate to and perceive the green space. I'm aware of that, and while my awareness is growing and changing, that background of gardener, as opposed to a grower of foods and other types of harvesting, is part of my experience. Anyway, I say all that as a little bit of history so that you understand my development has a starting place, and a certain limited perspective.

So I asked the tree. I included the context the way I've explained it to you, and listened... The first impression I had was to look more closely at the tree. I found myself looking carefully at the shape of the leaves, and mostly looking at the pattern of the bark on the trunk and branches. I took this to mean that I needed to know the tree better by seeing and feeling, and to know it less as an idea, or as an object. To see it less as something that needed something done about it, and more as an already person doing it's thing.

A certain amount of embarrassment always accompanies the realization of my previously limited perspective when a new way is presented, especially when it's coming form a person I thought of as an ornament before then. :) Nothing to be done about that except to change and carry on. After looking carefully and closely and relating my wish I got a quiet impression of acceptance, but of a conditional acceptance. I knelt beneath the tree while listening, my hands on the ground and my head bowed. It happened that way without my thinking about it. When I understood and agreed, a little surge happened, and from my hands a drop turned into a circular wave, kind of like the way a drop of water makes a small splash and then concentric circles move out from the center, only this was upside down. My impression was of having seen a tone, like a bell would make, travel down and out from the point of our understanding and agreement. Something happened between us that moved into it all somehow. It felt like a prayer. I wanted to do it again, but didn't want to be frivolous with it like it was a new toy. It was something I realized I could do on my own, to bounce my intention into the all, but it was different when it was in relationship with a living tree, and bounced into the earth in a specific place, signifying a specific agreement, or understanding.

The tree asked, (I received impressions that felt like a request) and I said alright and agreed. It asked that each branch, no matter how big or small, be carried down to the place where I was putting them individually. It seemed inefficient, and it would take a lot of time to do it that way as opposed to cutting them all, making a pile, and then carrying the whole pile in a few trips. So along with my asking before each cut, and listening to confirm it was alright, I carried the branches slowly down the hillside to the spot they were going to be put. I did that for awhile and then I stopped. I quit honoring the request because it was just taking to long. I have so many other things to do that I don't really have time to go so slowly. This same type of thing happens to me in ceremony. I'll get a specific request, agree, and then at some point in the process of carrying it out I do something else or something different. I do what I want to do. When that happens it always becomes a lesson about listening. About listening and considering more deeply what I'm hearing and have agreed to do. When those lessons occur, new layers of meaning unfold at deeper and more encompassing levels of relationship. I'm also made aware of how, when I don't listen, the excuses I make are coming from attitudes that hold me back from greater depths of understanding. I wind up getting embarrassed and feeling grateful at the same time.

The lesson the tree taught me was that each leaf is an event, each branch more so, and that each leaf and branch took time, effort, and had a reason for being. Going slow would be a way to honor each event, and the importance of each act of being that made up this tree. It would help me become aware that the tree was aware, and invested in each movement of it's expression. It wasn't as though every cell was a spectacular event, but maybe that's because I gave up on going slowly. Maybe there's a depth I didn't get to because I was "busy".

I apologized to the tree by writing this today, and to make amends I'm going down into the garden to kneel and listen and explain my sorrow for not listening as well as I could have before. If I'm fortunate the tree will hear my sincerity and understand that I've learned. Maybe then we can send another shared understanding together into this place, this soil where it grows, and where I'm growing too.

Communion...

After reading a post on Bio Regional Animism I went out to the garden I have here at home with the intention of communing with the land. It's a beauty garden, one I've grown just to have beautiful plants here for myself, my wife and the other folks at this little apartment building overlooking the water in Queen Anne.I've been moving plants from one garden spot to another so their out of the way of oncoming construction. I had more to move and save from losing them to a bull dozer, which is an uncaring and rude device, and I asked the plant devas to please accept that I was moving the plants to a new home around the corner. One with better soil and shade for them, rhododendron's and azaleas, because the full sun was keeping them to hot and dry. I got an immediate feeling in response and translated the feeling into words that seemed to fit it. It was very bouncy and talkative in a quick cadence and it had a definite sense of how I should proceed. I went with the feeling and translation and did some things I've never done before. I let the plant devas pick what plant to transplant first by asking them which one to move and found them to be very specific, like, "this one first, no no no not that one, this one"! OK I thought, that one, and then staying open to it, I asked about how to dig it up. Not with words out loud, but using an inner voice, and I got an immediate response, ........ "like this" and saw they wanted it done a certain way. So I did that, and I was carrying the plant in a container down to the new place, inviting them along when they said "hurry hurry hurry", and I thought what for, and they said, "no one likes their roots exposed for very long", and I thought about how I never even thought about that before, or how it might feel to the plant to have it's roots exposed.

Down at the new spot I was looking for where exactly it should go, and they said "no no no, over here", as I started to put the plant in one place and they were insistent that it go just where they wanted it too. OK......., I thought, you started this, so just keep honoring what your feeling and hearing. I dug a hole where they wanted it and was adding some water to it, when they said, "that's enough, that's enough", so I asked why, and they said, "look, you just get the roots covered and we'll find our way to water". I was surprised and a bit astonished. While digging the hole for it where they'd said I came across a worm because it's good rich soil, and they said, "no no no", as I went to move the worm, and said "put it on the side of the hole just there", which I did and started to cover it with dirt, but they said "no just wait" and I thought to myself that this was getting out of hand. These chatty, insistent and highly specific instructions were not how I'm accustomed to gardening, and they said "you'll see why". So I continued with the hole and continued finding worms, which they insisted needed to be put all together in that one spot, and not just dumped there, but set down carefully, and they all had to be in contact with each other, touching each other. So here I am making a little pile of worms and then placing the azalea in the hole while being cajoled by voice/feelings to hurry up. When the azalea was in place they had me put the worms, who seemed to be waiting patiently, in a specific spot and cover them with a very light amount of soil, less than I would have thought good for the worms, but apparently exactly what was the right amount according to the chatter bug devas.

They were very clear that certain vines should be keep out and vigorously removed, it was some kind of morning glory, which is a monster to deal with, and that others should be left alone. As I went to remove a big dandelion they had a fit. "No no no"!
"Ok already", I thought, while I understood it was to be left alone, and as I realized how many dandelions I'd pulled up this year while I tried to think that thought quietly and hide the thought away so they wouldn't hear it.

I was gardening for hours and I thought to myself that I can never go back to how I used t do it. I'm sure this sounds like a bit of a Disney cartoon, but that's also what it felt like to me at the time, like I'd unstopped my ears, and gardening was going to be good, but annoyingly noisy for awhile to come. I'm telling you this straight, not making it up, and it feels a bit heavy while it was also certainly fun. It really feels like everything is going to be different. I mean I'm happy about it, but feel kind of bad about all the years I've been doing it my way for my happiness, and not realizing it's not just an activity about me alone, but the brothers and sisters in green and gold, and their allies have feelings and purposes too.

I'm in relationship with several sacred plant medicines, so maybe this shouldn't be such a surprise, but it is. Not that it happened, but that it was so clear, and so highly specific. Just like some people I know, who like their eggs just so, and placed just so, and only half a glass of orange juice please, and never the blue tea cups with the green tea, thank you very much. I wouldn't kid about this, because my relationships are where I try to live out my spiritual ideals, and so this new one is going to need a lot of care and attention the way the others do, and all because some guy I've never met reminded me to open up to it.

Yikes........ and thanks for your post on Bio Regional Animism tribe LLB.

New life, little brothers...

Yesterday morning at 5 pm the day started, and it began that early because of my kittens alarm. A kittens alarm is when two young kittens communicate their needs and desires by circling the apartment faster and faster until objects get sucked into their wake and start crashing to the floor. I've been growing a variety of tiny succulents in little bonsai pots that are only 2 inches by 2 inches big. The plants grow slowly in such small containers and need almost daily watering to be alright. I love the robust miniatures that grow after a couple of years in the tiny pots. I water them every other day and keep them on the windowsill above the sink. It's a kind of discipline, staying conscious of this little beautiful thing that depends on my remembering to care for it so that it can flourish.

Yesterday I had the experience of listening to the creatures around me from a limited perspective, the experience of imposing my agenda on their growth and my timing, or reasoning, to their life. I was doing this according to my own calculations of readiness without really listening to them. I wasn't listening by watching and feeling and sensing for the clues to their readiness, I wasn't listening to their own agenda and growth needs. So at 5pm they let me know as clearly as they could without words that they were ready to go outside. They did this by starting a small hurricane in my apartment. As my tiny bonsai succulents got caught up in their wake and crashed to the kitchen floor I woke up angry, but then I woke up to their needs, expressed the only way their little bodies could tell me, or get through to me, by pulling a crescendo of objects crashing to the floor. My estimation of their readiness was in my head, but their actual readiness was clearly spoken and exhibited in their behavior. It dawned on me that they were ready to go outside!

I'm fortunate to have a place where I can let them out. The little patio outside of the back double doors leads to a front yard that I've been gardening in for the last 4 years. I've had to move all my plantings recently because a house is going to be built there this winter. It's been a real drag to dismantle all my work and move the plants to new places, but I'm lucky enough to be living at the end of a dead end street overlooking the green belt between us and Elliot street down below. I've terraced off some of it to create a garden there also, so I just expanded it to include room for the plants from the upper garden. This is the garden where I had my experience of listening to the little plant deva's that I spoke about before. So I "listened" to the kittens, and let them outside. I had to face all my worries and fears and start a new negotiation with the universe. This is where I talk to the life at large all around me and try to make a deal. Doing this is revealing. I can hear all my worries, my concerns and my hopes as I'm doing it. I sat out there with the little ones, Pinto and Jasper, and while they explored and played I negotiated. I also followed them around keeping an eye on them while I was doing it. It was a deep conversation, and it put me in touch with how much I rely on a relationship with living world. Outside the doors of my apartment I have to contend with life, all the living beings that are busy doing their own thing and that I need to somehow get into balance with. My motivation was the little brothers I'm raising as part of my family. While I'm trying now to listen to their needs as expressed quite clearly in their behavior, in the same way I was listening during my negotiation to the life all around our back doors, having accepted, as my little bonsai's crashed to the floor, that I can't simply impose my schedule and expectations on a living system full of living beings.

I've gone on long enough this morning.... I'll pick this story up later as it continues to unfold. I'll tell you more about the deal I struck and the hopes I have and the voices of life outside my patio doors, but for now I need to be out there, in the grass with my kittens and the plant deva's and all the rest because I'm part of it too, this little party of life in the yard outside. Today started at 5 am not with a crash, but with a question, are you awake Papa, because the big yellow ball is in the sky and we really want to go outside. It's 6:30 now and we watched the sun come up together, all of us feeling that message clearly and responding in our own ways to the call. I'm being trusting and brave by writing to you here. I've taken my eyes off the action outside and I'm extending my trust, not that life will go the way I want it to, but that If I listen carefully I can dance with what's happening and open the door in time to the beating of little hearts before they drop another bonsai on my head. :)

Two ways to play.

You don't have to pick the right one, anyone will do. What matters isn't who you think they are, but how you are with them.

If you've got a list of hoped for things you intend to seek out in their psyche before you swoon, then good luck. If your busy getting to know them, and are slowly doing so while you wait to discover if their the one, good luck with that too.
If your cataloging their qualities to see if they have what it takes, then keep your chin up and have at it. If your watching to see how they respond to different situations so you can tell yourself you know who they are and what they'll do, then I'll bring you flowers and chicken soup cause your gonna need it soon. If your watching them grow to decide if they're doing it enough or doing it in the right direction, or if your studying their behavior to get to the truth of them, then I'll bring you tissue's and chocolate cause your gonna want both, one to dry your tears, and one to cheer you up.

There's two ways to play, and knowing is the sad one, because really, what's there left to do once you know?

Let her be a novel with a plot that's wandering and epic and settle in for the long read. Those slow summer days without any expectations of getting to the end of the book. It's enough that you found it, enough that your kicked back with a lemonade and following the story. You wouldn't dream of changing a page of it, but only want the story to go on and on so that you can keep reading about what happens next.

Let her be a movie, one where you'd just stay in the theatre for ever if only you could keep watching her, that amazing actor on the screen. Let him, or her, be the star in the film you've gone to see, and just watch what happens.

Pick someone, or pick the one your with now, and stop trying to know them.
Stop pretending the story has already been told, stop treating them like a re-run on TV. Stop saying or believing you know who they are, and settle in for a good long read. You'd be amazed at how interesting it is not to know.

There's only two ways to play and being interested makes you interesting to him or her. Actors love fans and can't stand critics. Authors love readers who really follow the story, and they work hard to keep the story full of drama and surprises for their loyal fans.

My advice is this...
Take your your book to the beach, because it's great to sit there and have snacks while you read, or take it on a long train ride through the canyons of Mexico, or just pull the covers of the bed over your heads and pretend you could be anywhere at all while you read.Take your lead actor or actress to Mozambique because they love exotic locations to work in, or take them for a walk in the park down the street, but take them because you have this chance, this privileged moment to get an in-depth interview with the actor of your dreams. You really don't care what they say, you just want them to say it to you...

The long road home.

One life from two,
shattered on these shores,
the unity of consciousness forgotten.
At each others throat with tooth and claw,
the reason for being lost in hunger and survival.

The beauty of nature, as long as it's not you being eaten. The majesty of creation, for a poet, but not a mouse.

The way things are, is that what beauty is....

One life from two,
shattered on these shores.

Prayer

Where the possibility of joy is hidden, I pray it reveals itself to you.

When love is reaching and searching for you, I pray it finds you open.
I pray the moments of recognition, and so new friendship, are yours this day,
and that the deepening of a love you already hold continues.

Dreams become reality,
when intentions woven and released on the wind,
rise up as offerings into the atmosphere.
Held gently in mind while they travel the byways,
encouraged by our prayers to find their destination,
alighting quietly and gracefully with a gossamer touch,
and someone thinks, "yes this, I feel this," and dreams become reality...

Says

First he lied, then the vision of home faded from her eyes and she died.
Grandmother says, "awaken girl for you cannot die, and love needs no protection".

She says, "she isn't harmed boy, she isn't diminished, she is now and always has been clean". She says, "walk out of the dark, the terror and the dream". She says, "your family's here, life is here, where you are loved and welcomed". Grandmother says, "oh my love, my child, let me into your heart and mind, hear my voice girl in the wind calling you home".

The Gift

My oldest friend left the world I'm standing in a few days ago. He'll never leave me completely because my gratitude for his friendship will be with me always. Who I am is more than just shaped by our time together, who I am and who I've become is the result of all those days and years spent near one another. His warm heart found a home in mine and his love for me during my darkest days is what made it possible to get through them.

Who am I now, that carries another soul inside me?
He's gone now, and I grieve deeply for the loss. I haven't cried like this in years.
I keep looking for him where I'm used to seeing him, when I need to be with him,
and the memory that he's gone sets me adrift.
I'm without the comfort of his presence, and yet who I am is what his love has made of me, as surely as all those who've loved me have had a hand in my becoming.

He's here with me still, and not just in memory, but in the truth of me as I am today. My kindness was shaped by his, and my heart is open because I opened it wide to let him in. I became someone good because I wanted him to love me, and someone generous because I wanted him feel how much I care.

His friendship was, and is, one of the most beloved and cherished things I've ever been blessed to hold, and I will love him through all the remaining days and years of my life. That we'll meet again must be assured, because who could be separated for long from their own true heart, the heart that's bigger than a single life can carry, the heart that only two friends together can hold.

She is sacred...

In each seasons time and place something new arises, shaped from the memory of what came before.
Purified and brought forth again until it's form, it's voice and fragrance, reveal the intention and the promise you would express and share. Like flowers in the vase of your self, arranged just so, a gift renewed and changing through the seasons of your being.
The secrets of your heart, what you care for with faith and certainty, growing and blooming within you. The garden inside, and what flourishes there.

Asleep in the night, still you give rise to creation. Your dreaming moments alive with the expression of your soul. Blanketed by snow, quiet and still, you only appear to be at rest. I see you stir beneath the covers and I can feel the excitement, the anticipation of your ideas become expression in the vase and valley of your body.

Any moment now you'll awaken and open your eyes in this new season, this new day, this new chance to tell your story in the gifts you lay before us, the poetry and architecture of your dreams and awakening spirit.