June was all festivalia and flights of fancy. I danced on more than one huge lawn, swam naked in more than one body of water, and found myself being courted by more than one eligible bachelor. I had a peaceful, easy feeling that snowballed right up until the end of the month, when it went splat and melted in the July heat.
July saw me break up with the man I was dating (which, let's be honest, was a welcome relief), return from my herbal apprenticeship backpacking trip covered in mosquito bites, and gain back some of the weight I'd lost. Turns out I can't just cross my fingers and hope that an unhealthy pattern will somehow heal itself. The work still has to be done and I'm still the one who has to do it.
On the road home from the mountains I picked up a dead bird on the side of the highway, and once home discovered that it was a perfectly intact owl. I wouldn't have gotten a gift like that if I wasn't worthy of it . . . so essentially, I'm in trouble now. The last weekend in July I participated in a fire ceremony that spun me out into the deep recesses of my shadow: disconnected, alienated, alone.
And almost immediately across the border into August, a shift: this time, a roller-coaster ride along the spiral of life. I officiated my oldest friend's wedding; spent a week on the road with my father; served as a kind of doula at my friend's birth; and got word that another friend and teacher, a true luminary, has died. Niall and Rivka's baby dropped into this world like a sheer miracle just a few days before Frank Cook, legendary plant teacher and wisdom holder, passed out of it, well before his time. I'm still stewing in the many hard and breathtaking truths of these past few weeks, as I rest here on the cusp of a journey to the world's strangest neon desert bacchanal.
But I notice an awareness, a lightness in me that I have never known before. A sense of being quietly awe-struck, holding a reverence for the meaningful meaninglessness and the meaningless meaningfulness of life, the world and everything. Some veil has lifted and I find myself viscerally aware of my power to choose at every moment, and the possibility of landing, over and over again, in the present. I am smiling into the mystery and in so doing find a tenderness, a forgiveness for myself that is entirely new. Facing darkness enables me to allow light in, as it turns out, and this bemusing and wondrous reality is the seed of my practice now.
Onward, into the dust . . .
1 comment:
hey, you're back! awesome! Hope your summer has been exactly what you needed. Alaska was good. We are fine. A little cat puke on my couch, but otherwise, A-OK. hugs.
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