Softened

I visit the dunes and the lake again. Now the snow is gone, the mountains disappeared and the landscape is barren, cleared. In spite of the warmer temperatures and stiller winds, it appears colder than when the snow heaped into canyons and the ice extended out, far over the water. 

The lake, my old friend, is unrecognizable, a different lake. Instead of that being of slate gray, of frozen convulsion, it lies placid, almost still. What was hard and dark is teal and aquamarine, and if I didn’t know better, if the cold of the winter were not still nipping at the back of my neck, it could convince me that it is as warm as the Caribbean of my childhood. 

I gaze at it in wonder, recognizing that this one, and the lake of my memory are the same, even as they seem so different. 

And I am reminded again, as I have been so often before, that this is a reflection of my Self. Or is it I who reflect it? 

Either way, I too am unrecognizable, my cold, grey edges have softened into lapping waves.

Photo by Renee McGurk

Photo by Andrea Friedmann

Another World

I stand on this familiar bridge, looking down through the spaces between the steel, at the place where it seems so recently I spotted a lone turtle swimming through the unnaturally green river water. At the time, I was surprised that anything could survive in there, and I can still feel the warmth of joy spilling through me at the realization. Not long after, as I paused on my way across the river, I saw a great blue heron poised at the water’s edge, still as a statue, unblinkingly observing the flow.

Today, as I look down, it is another world. There is no sign of the electric green water. No sign of birds or turtles. Looking through the steel grid, my stomach does not quiver, there is no inkling of the vertigo that comes of gazing into flowing currents from such heights. There is no sign of movement of any kind. There is only a thick crust of white ice.

It is another world: static, cold, hard.

I yearn to see movement, a turtle surfacing gracefully or a red leaf swirling in the flow. Instead, the only sign of life is the cloud of my own breath.

The hairs on my arm rise, under all the layers of clothes, as the wind rises against me. I cannot stay here any longer, searching.

As I turn away, I remind myself: if I wait long enough, the water will flow again, and the trees alongside it will grow leaves, and, if I am quiet, and patient, I will find wildlife here too.

Photo by Christine Landis

Sets of Seven

Somewhere, I once read that the body renews itself every seven years. It’s unlikely to be true, physiologically, but I like to think that I am starting a new seven year cycle, and that, therefore, like a child, I can observe with delight everything around me, experiencing the world with wonder, seeing clearly what is there, instead of what I have learned to see.

My first seven years I spent drinking in the world. The next seven years were about shaping myself to what I found. The third seven were the back and forth between resisting and trying to fit in. The fourth set of seven years were about my Self beginning to call me back, beginning to remember it, to recognize its glimmer. The fifth set of seven years was the time of struggling to come to terms with what I had created, the places I found myself in. And the sixth set of seven has been about accepting my Self, respecting it, as well as my Wisdom. I am curious and open to what the theme of the seven years before me could be.

I am richer, fuller, stronger, and more centered than I ever remember, and I can’t think of a better way to begin another stretch of this journey.

Photo credit: ©Coloniera (Héctor Landaeta) at RGBStock.com

What Works For Me

Change is popping up everywhere around me, and I am giving myself large, inner spaces to chew on it. Brujo is no longer employed, after 8 years at the same place, and he is exploring possibilities and options with excitement and enthusiasm, and also some trepidation. We will soon become in-laws, as his eldest son is marrying this month. I have immersed myself in the work of Dr. Mario Martinez, using it for my own deep healing and growth, with all the changes that implies. I have been digesting the growing awareness (again) of the violence against women that exists in far away places and also here at home, with its implications for women everywhere, for the whole of human society, and for my daughter and son. I have also been holding energy for many others, who are experiencing their own changes.

I am aware that any of these points could have easily pushed me off my center, not so long ago. So it is with awe and gratitude that I navigate these changes with such a sense of sustained peace, and with eagerness for the opportunities they afford me. I know that the work I have done all these years, to bring myself into alignment with my authenticity and to maintain my energetic integrity, are the reason this is possible. As so, I keep doing what I have been doing, what I already know works for me: making space for stillness; being with What Is, openly, trusting the gifts in it; returning to nature, to my breath, to gratitude, to service, to love.

© Constantin Jurcut at RGBStock.com

What If

What if we all woke up one day, any day, today, and believed that a stage curtain had been drawn over night between the past and the present, and this was a new chance to choose right action? What would it be like, if I walked out in awareness that I see the light in others, and in myself; and knowing that everyone I run into sees it, too? What if I expected every slight to be born from misunderstanding, knowing I have nothing to defend, and entered every conflict prepared to listen deeply, my heart open? What if everyone around me did the same?  What if we all accepted our Self, and what if we all felt accepted, safe to be present where we are, who we are? What if we knew ourselves whole, instead of fractured, and saw the wholeness in each other? What if kindness and tenderness were the first emotions we experienced when we interacted with each other?

What if I let myself live this way, as if it were true….?

©Agnes Scholiers (TouTouke) atRGBStock.com

It’s Coming

That irritability, the discomfort, that impatience that I have been feeling… it is a sign. It is a rapping on the door, a weathervane turning. Change is coming.

 

But change is always coming. Nothing remains static, except, sometimes, small self’s grasping for predictability.

 

True. Change is coming. But more than that, something is wanting to take form, something is asking to be given shape. That edginess comes from the distant, quiet awareness that I am being called, that I am being invited to allow some indistinct feeling to come through me and express itself in my life, through my body, or within it, perhaps.

 

Now that I recognize it, now that it is named, I can permit myself to remember how often I have experienced this before.

 

And how I am filled with wonder by what it is that results.

 

And so, instead of pushing away the change that will come, with or without my consent, I can center myself and prepare to receive it.