I rose early seeking Beltane dewdrops with which to anoint my brow. the cupped violet stems and clover were dry and I found no dewdrops in the chickweed stars. Instead, I put out oranges for the orioles, ran my fingers through the dandelions, and pressed my nose into the lilacs. I spotted green flowers on the mulberry trees, found the first wild pink geraniums and tender bells of columbine and came face to face with the quiet black eyes of solemn deer in the raspberry bushes. These things their own kind of anointing, their own small and significant rites of May Magic.
I chose not to follow crows today, but turned away to follow the mist instead, descending down a rocky hill and into an underworld of my own making, in which I laid aside the pressures of pleasantness and considered how it would feel to lay my drive down across the stones too and walk away, leaving it gasping in surrender between a flattened cracker of frog and finality. I knelt beside blue chicory with a cloak of white fog across my shoulders feeling weary of smiling, thin of patience, and with only a thread of faded magic beating feebly beneath my skin. I pondered messages from purple asters, gravel beneath my knees, and resisted reaching for rosehips through the ebbing bowers of poison ivy. An unripe persimmon, gleaming purple-red below the bright white sky, rolled into my path and as I made my way back up the hill two vultures rose silent and hulking from the trees, so close I heard their feathers whispering together. I felt an ember quicken quietly beneath my breast and on the gliding motion of broad wings, I was reminded that we can always choose which way to go, and that even thin and tattered magic is worth savoring.
There is nothing tidy here life is too broad and billowing to be contained, restrained, confined, constrained by lists and wishes and well-laid plans, or even by thin and bloodless prayers. There is nothing tidy here, expect wild winds and sharp teeth amid the violets and sunrises. There is nothing tidy here, the world a great jumble of twining grapevine, sprawling brambles, winding roots, and beating hearts. There is nothing to do with such an untidy world, but whirl with the wonder of it all, keeping your hand outstretched to touch everything, even if your feet bleed and your skin is streaked with sorrow and joy.
Last weekend, I was thinking about how to conclude the book I am writing, how to finish it, how to know it is done, how to wrap it up tidily, with some kind of moral or lesson for living, some kind of final conclusion of "figuring it all out." In the quiet moments as I questioned, walking around in circles on my back deck, I received a reply that then became a poem: there is nothing tidy here.
Goddess of the sacred pause please grant me the courage to lay aside swiftness and take up slowness, to embrace limitations as learning, silence as stabilizing, waiting as worthy, and sitting as divine. Goddess of the sacred pause help me to know stillness as strength, patience as powerful, and healing time as holy necessity.
I fell down hard this week and injured my ankle pretty badly. It has been hard to go from the magic of mobility, to spending time in bed with my leg elevated and an ice pack on. As is common to note when dealing with an unexpected experience, I am noticing how very much I took for granted my own swift movements through the day, the everydayness of being able to easily get myself where I need to go.
What if you were to sit by the river of your own life observing the current watching the flow, sensing the depth, feeling the rhythm, and not needing to tell about it, but instead taking a long, replenishing drink.
I’m getting ready to take some time off from classwork and public content generation and planning a bit of a social media hiatus as well as to focus on my piling up book projects. And, our annual Cauldron Month is rapidly approaching. One of my own guideposts of life is Mary Oliver’s Instructions for Living a Life:
stuck my legs straight up in the air and then spread them open to the sky. I brought my knees into my chest and laid there on the stone like a stranded beetle for a while thinking.
I had the sensation that I was waiting for something, some insight or inspiration or magical something to happen, and had a vague feeling of disappointment in such a “normal day” with no special lesson or encounter.
But, then I heard a small voice from within say:
“well, you got your spirit back, so there’s that.”
And, I decided that was enough.
On my way back to the house, there was a snail on a leaf.
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