The garlands woven

And then there are days like this, when good works spills from the fingers like water, and good counsel and cheer are found in the most unlikely places. A storm threatens to open up, but the free air it brings is worth any worry, and I walk here and there in the green grass with arms swinging.
I’m as tall as sunflowers today, and as fragile as the few pole beans that made it through the weeds. I try to remember what it means to be a leader, but slip erstwhile into reveries of a flowered fantasy, where all is simple, solemn and pretty. Here’s pansy for thoughts, a white chrysanthemum for Truth, dandelion for a rustic oracle, yew for sorrow, eglantine for poetry, water willow for freedom, magnolia for a love of nature paired with the yellow violet for my rural happiness. A diverse bouquet I offer out, while crowned with lupines for imagination. And yet I hold back two small blooms; a sprig each of Maythen, which the Normans renamed Chamomile, and of Marigold, for the changing tides of energy in adversity and despair.

Ending episodes of pain is like waking up. New eyes see what has been forgotten in the dreaming, and a newly freed mind spins into hurried work to amend the lax. Shame can lead unfortunately to wounded pride when others take notice of you have not, and not wanting to admit the real reason for the disappearance, I scramble about, half wanting to tear up, and make right in bursts of morning sunlight that which has been revealed to be missing. Renewed joy and freedom all too quickly sucked away with the startling obligations of the material world. The grass is still green, though, and the few hours I may pass in search of myself are in the end well spent, even if they feel stolen at the time.

Dove flight

The little dove, rescued in a pre-dawn hour, would not take flight on the upswing of my releasing hands. She sailed down to the grass with a thud, and after a moment of sickening pity, took to her wings with a familiar pulsing call, and disappeared into the night. How similar I feel to this poor creature, rejecting aid from fright, hitting bottom on her own, to erupt into flight on her own.

It’s scary, really, the thought of actually changing oneself, of permanently setting aside those dark little friends that have been made from my faults. A fear maybe of the vacuum that threatens to open up? Or of no longer knowing myself after so long a study in hurt feelings. Despair is like a tumbling shoal of rocks, new worry and strife taking up the breakneck pace of the pebbles first set into motion. The avalanche has been let loose, and although I deeply recognize the its futility and meaninglessness, the thought, the feelings, like a great descending swarm of birds, or a familiar heroically bombastic aria drowns out sensible feelings and living.

I would go to sleep, but there always seems to be a tractor running at such times, and this is most genuinely a blessing.

Duty to Give

Mown into shape, a high Summer bounds along. I am Earth splattered, Sun baked, remnants of morning dew still clinging about cuff hem and sandal-buckle, and all the while knowing that although each moment is vital and precious, this feeble life-time stands so faintly small against the scope of Time. Up to Light, racing to meet the Book of Time, trees stand steadfast, and throughout their centuries of existence not one moment is wasted, one episode without meaning and worth. What story could I write that hasn’t already existed, that would be better and purer than what is already possible within the Laws of the Father?

An aspect, long simmering beneath those more easily recognizable, has at last found its time and place to come upward. Shifting again I see and nearly shudder to have it crystallized and exposed. A deeper part of myself, something I’ve never found outlet for, though I felt it and its presence pushed swollen against the confines I placed around my living. But, then again, we are all rock stars in the private arena of our minds. Such qualities as excite and surprise me are only what is my duty to give, my bill to Creation. In the garden I find a similar reality: plants do all the work, really, turning soil, water and Sun into life, we just make a little way for them and deserve not really much credit.

I feel how close Purity and Simplicity are, and from them Valor so easily springs, so naturally ignites. A little cleaning inside my being, sweeping slowly away dust until the pattern of the floor can be seen, laid with a design so close to what I had already hoped through much trail and decision-forming. How essentially happy living is, and how terribly beautiful.

Changing paces

There’s a black and white cat wandering in the hay field. Through mismatched piles of hairy fodder, he sounds some strange primeval call: “This is new, this is all new. I can walk here now, right toward you! Silly humans, take notice of me, I am at such ease!” I love the hay, the Sun who torments any who dare to linger in the physicality of the task, the grace in repetition, the fertile light-filled smell, the memory which takes over and teaches these particular hands just the right movement. In my thoughts I’m riding horses again. A happy trotting, moving briskly on some not-too-urgent message. Where am I heading? Not sprinting away like other times, not narrowly escaping danger. Now a long season of refusals comes to a close; many paths foundered, many directions aborted. Have I chosen wisely?

Now a little sister is born to my usual set of feelings and I come to face it: anger, a sensation I have carefully side-stepped for so long. Never deigning to actually manage such feelings, ever finding the watery way around such states. Now too many pebbles break the peace, and I cannot continue as I always have. Even in the garden it is the time for the beetles to gnaw away. Great hordes piles on the sweetest of flowers, and we must react to the invaders without vengeance, spite or viciousness. Addressing honestly what beleaguers us. How I wish sometimes to paint myself openly as I experience myself inwardly: frail, whithered, and often hopeless. Is it really Love then that forges such feelings into a language unrecognizable to those around me? Letting them not take hold on my ever-present theory that I am essentially broken. I am unconscious still of what others provide for me, of what I mean to them, but ever closer to a truer understanding of friendship.

Again, I’m inclined to assume that all things take figuring out, that peace and deep thought can solve anything. I am ever guided, though, and helped though I tend to feel so alone. Just listening to the cues now can be my greatest strength. Where am I heading then, on my mission? May the Lord grant me a clear path, for I feel ready as ever to ride.

Evolving

At the end of the day, most things are alright. The evening sky is ever beautiful, solemn, and forthright. The stars ever speak of times to come, times that were, when the little imaginings of our present world are infinitely far from sight. Hope springs in every grass blade, and love in every opening blossom, and poetry revels itself in the dusty corners I have forgotten, the ancient memory of the sprightly, solemn personality I can’t escape.

We come to the haying, the first inkling to put aside for darker times the bounty and light unfolding before us. We watch tentatively the crops that are meant for winter storage. The crops we know will not survive the frost we measure and test now, ever with a mind to meet the finish line. Like waking up in late adolescence, realizing that life takes effort, and gathering up the scraps of cultivated individuality, so we intake a little breath, and look to hoes, rakes, and mason jars.

As if still in last night’s dream, I awake to the building warmth a little ineffective to my surroundings. I could lie down in the meadow, the flowers and grass growing over my peaceful form, if it wasn’t time to mow such places clean, to rake, pile and order the growth. Ever Nature asks “what do you wish to become?”. A little seed ripening, an evaporating dew drop, a steady trustworthy little bee. All such things move ever forward, dance always in happiness, change continually themselves and their surroundings. At the end of the day, most things are different. They have evolved, they have endured.

Anticipation in joy

Dawn broke in the east, standing the hemlocks in dark contrast against the pale promise of light. In the south, a moon just past full poured his radiance past a friendly star and into pools of milky softness on my bedroom floor. So Summer days are started, leaping in on one another in eager anticipation of what adventures will come. I love soft gusts of wind that feel more like welcoming friends than elements of nature, Summers that linger on the doorstep of heat, and chicories that out-blue the sky. The Sun set under a roof of thunder clouds now spent; a slanting light reaches each dewy morsel in the meadow, setting life aglow.

I feel sort of at an end to things, not sure what’s to come next, or how I should go there. Deep thoughts of despair, and a cloud of disinterest hang over eyes that would glimpse a beautiful Summer. What will happen next? Maybe this is a shade of a feeling once before, on the crest of Eowyn’s wave, utterly dark before her feet. My husband and I are probably very much alike: speaking too quietly and requiring too much effort in the listening. He’s burdened down with work and unheeded, I’m swallowed up in strange waters, as what I remembered of myself slips away. It will have to change, somehow.

As a child chasing butterflies, so I chase happiness. And when it rests upon my outstretched fingers, so often my peals of delight send it flying away once more, and loosing sight of my treasure when eyes were shut for laughter, the song dies away in my throat, and each step forward feels feeble. Maybe I'll tire of the game some day, and looking around me for the first time, regard the happiness inherent in all Creation; the joy in being which remains so elusive to feeble humanity. In anticipation I fumble awkwardly through life, hoping for the sweet relief of acceptance and home right around the corner. If I could only just solidly convince myself that home begins in my own heart, and that only acceptance needed is that of myself, perhaps all at once I will find myself at work, and in joy.

Arrival

We have arrived in Summer. No longer can a blushing June lend cover to the heat, the lushness of verdant Summer. The first raspberries hint to ripeness, the currants hang heavily on feeble, wispy stems. Amid all the fullness, I feel as juices running dry; a wrinkled raisin me weaving through daily chores between the burst of life. I see how emotion clings to the coattails of perception, haranguing clarity with a centrifugal force of whatever’s in season; be it woundedness, fear, despair, or dizzying elation. Simple thoughts can be easily clouded, clear recognitions sullied by a wash of imagination. Learning to latch on to what is not forgotten, in moments of clear remembering, in moments of prayer. Then so few questions remain, the one outlasting them all: how may I serve thee better, O Lord?

And then I danced again for the first time in years, and was shocked by heaviness vanishing, by swiftness returning, and by the flutter beats of heart and feet. How wonderful it felt to bypass intellect, to learn through play and unlearning, to laugh at the walls a mind builds around the existence it’s used to. Three little points of light in the darkness, as shimmering stars before a night’s journey: Clarity, Naturalness, Simplicity. I found them in the instances of a weekend, now I seek them out in the everyday, like tender seedlings to weed around, to bring furthering light to.

Start first by cleaning the house, by moving into the new kitchen. Remember the deep work that women weave: not just a home on the earth, but a home for the heart, where peace may be found, where the spirit may feel safe to unfold itself, where a beauty that springs from personal experiencing clings to corners like shining ivy. Wanting it so long, and coming to realize how important it is to me, has been the slow steady work of Winter and Spring. No sooner I can hold back the ripening Summer than deny this work before me. The last leg of a turn of the path; may weariness not overtake me, may I remember always the longings which outlast all feeble doubt.