Rainbow

Even at 90 years old, Maya Angelou continued to inspire and lead us to love. Her words, her voice, her face, all connect me to Source in an instant. The forgetfulness of my soul of who I truly am, falls away and I remember. I remember I am light and I am endless possibility. I remember I have the choice in every moment of how I will shine, or not, in this universe. I remember, that as much as I love this beautiful earth, it is not my only home. I/we are much greater than this place.

Maya Angelou – “Be A Rainbow In Somebody Else’s Cloud”

I remember to learn from each experience rather than judge it. I remember to be gentle with my heart so it expands. I remember the only way to illuminate darkness is to shine my unique brilliance. I remember I possess all the beauty of a rainbow.

Butterfly Goo

Ever wonder what goes on inside that cocoon? How does an ungainly caterpillar transform into one of God’s most graceful beings? What on earth is happening in there?

What if I told you it’s butterfly goo? What if I said, to transform, you’ll need to completely dissolve, decompose the self you know as you? Could you trust? Could you be that vulnerable? Could you let go so completely the choice of wings?

 

 

Tickled

“Most of us can’t tickle ourselves, it’s true, but in a world of garden fairies and water sprites our senses can be humored if you only pay attention”

unknown

 

In the garden, time changes if you let it. Take a breath in and become small.

Lean in and you may feel the buzz, the scurry, the weaving of wonders.

Lean in and you may see the glisten of dew on the web, the flutter of wings, the tender shoots reaching for sunlight.

Lean in and you may smell the heavy oils of rosemary and white sage, the soft essence of blossoms opening, the earthy smell of decomposing biome.

Lean in and you may hear the work of bees gathering nectar, the quick hard chirps of a hummingbird finding it’s mate or the dunk and flutter of little brown birds bathing in the bath.

Lean in and you may taste the young herbs, the cool mint and gentle thyme.

Lean in and you may feel the warmth of a stone, the contrast of the shade tree, the edge of a path.

Lean in and you may know the exhilaration of work getting done, the vibration of chaos becoming order. 

Lean in and you, too, may feel the tickle of a fairy saying hello.

Hear Myself Living

Bzzzzz, click, chick-chick, hummmmm – the sound of life in my garden.  Hummers flit in and around the burble of the fountain. “Caw-ah! Caw-ah!” Hello my handsome iridescent friend. Crow has come to watch me work. He’s come to watch me arrange small stones in spirals and waves, curious for the shiny pieces placed here and there. He’s hoping for a prize.

“I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent–and working at a pace so slow–that I would be able to hear myself living.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things

Droplets of light dapple my skin as I lay my garden path. Whooshhhhh, the dapples dance as the breeze unsettles the leaves above. Silence. A butterfly pauses, wings like window panes in my church. My garden’s breath, it’s heartbeat, is that of my own. My garden is the place where I hear myself living.

Rain

She threw open the rain spattered window and pressed her head against the screen. The little creek was swollen and cascading over the rocks she’d built up, anticipating this very event . She could hear the power of the water finding it’s way over and down to its place of origin – It’s Goddess home

“Last Night The Rain Spoke To Me”

Mary Oliver

She stood there braving the chill with her bare feet and pajamas, allowing Mama’s waters to wash her spirit clean of human debris. For the briefest moment she rode the torrent, feeling free, alive and wild. In that moment she was Nature.

She was the Mystery.

Message from the Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers:

“As you move through these changing times… be easy on yourself and be easy on one another. You are at the beginning of something new. You are learning a new way of being. You will find that you are working less in the yang modes that you are used to.

You will stop working so hard at getting from point A to point B the way you have in the past, but instead, will spend more time experiencing yourself in the whole, and your place in it.

Instead of traveling to a goal out there, you will voyage deeper into yourself. Your mother’s grandmother knew how to do this. Your ancestors from long ago knew how to do this. They knew the power of the feminine principle… and because you carry their DNA in your body, this wisdom and this way of being is within you.

Call on it. Call it up. Invite your ancestors in. As the yang based habits and the decaying institutions on our planet begin to crumble, look up. A breeze is stirring. Feel the sun on your wings.”

One Strand At A Time

We never know our end. Will it be sudden? Will we get to say goodbye? Will it be pain or peace? Old or not so very?

Mom’s last years were like slow rolling hills. I couldn’t climb high enough to see where the road might lead. The valleys housed questions about life and death, mirky like shadows with undefined edges. No defined peaks to fall from and no great oceans to cross. One parched step after another with no view except to the present.

Something in me had to shift. Logic and reason were spattered drops against this vague umbrella called dementia. My weary heart had to step up. The habitual daily race slowed to sticky honey when I looked into Mom’s eyes. She was in there, unfairly jailed by the misfiring synapses of her brain. Was she screaming inside? Did she think me an idiot when I didn’t respond correctly to her garbled tongue? Did she notice the rain, the sun, the birds singing? I imagine her patient soul, waiting… and waiting.

These final years with Mom were long but they were sweet. Too often I’d hear well intentioned condolences of how hard it must be to see her that way, but it wasn’t hard. She was my mother and had loved me through every phase of my life. With the exception of two plus months after her move into a new care facility when I watched her lose her last finger hold on the edge of reality and fall screaming into the void (those two plus months when I cried and prayed for her swift death at the bottom of that fall), our time together held sweetness and joy. Moments of connection were pure delight that would ring in my heart for days at a time.

Little did I know how much she would crack open my heart in the time it took to unwind from this, her lifetime. Letting go one strand at a time, dying as she had lived, tenacious and strong to the end and reminding me that death, like birth, happens in it’s own time and time becomes meaningless.

On the day Mom died I bought a wrap of soft silver-grey with fine gold angel strands running through it. I’ve kept it close these tender days, wrapping myself in the cloth of her love, listening to cello music and feeling her soul dance with every note.

 

Comfort

Resting in the

                        Comfort

                                                       of Sunset

                 Raindrops falling

                                              Softly

       like a woman’s tears,

                                    Breathing deep,                      

                                                    she Naps

 

“There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself.”

Brian Andreas