Sequoia: healing from the roots up

We need to let go in order to come in to our own deepest belonging.    -John O'Donohue There is this great unmaking going on in me. I cannot stop it. I would not want to stop it if I could. It is the unmaking of everything in me that is covering over my truth, my authenticity, and my freedom. It is every mask I have ever worn. It is every opinion anyone else has ever projected onto me, that I have accepted. It is every regimen I have ever imposed on myself to try to be more perfect, covering over my inherent wholeness. It is every reaction I have ever had to those who misunderstand, criticize, or judge me. These reactions that come from my small self contained in a box - temporary insanity- forgetting that my true being is as vast, quiet, and still as an entire star-studded Universe. In the past six months I have been given many challenges, each one calling me deeper. Asking me to strip a little more dead skin away. Inviting me to stop caring about the opini...

I belong. Every time I drive down this particular strip of highway, I am reminded of what if feels like to be truly alive.  Going slowly down the highway, I am taking up more space than I wanted to.  So I push myself to live a little louder.  I say a holy yes. To this beautiful, hard, messy, lonely, exquisite life that I am living right now. It is so good. All of it. Fuck. It is so good. There is nothing I could add to it or take away from it that would make it more palatable, more perfect. It is so beautiful. My soul aches with its beauty. And I belong here. I belong to the golden wheat fields, and the golden aspen leaves. I belong to the rolling hills and the old barns that are falling apart. I belong to the cows, and the wide expanse of open sky. I belong to the bright full moon that I can see through the trees. My knocking knees tell me the truth. And the way my laugh bubbles up.  I belong to the sweet ...

Fill the blank canvas of your soul with your hungers, and the satiating of your hungers. She held the crumpled paper in her hands. She could smell how old it was. She smiled gently to herself as she began to unfold the paper. Wrinkled, smudged, barely legible in parts – it was an old list of her hungers. Hungers she has written down, maybe seventy years ago. A whole lifetime ago. Then, she was hungry for love, for meeting men, for finding friends. She was hungry for a career, for work in the world, to prove herself creatively. Hungry to take up her space on the earth. She was hungry for all the things that would satisfy deep in the marrow. The things that would make her feel free. Hungry for adventure, for adrenaline, for bliss. She was hungry for so much, in that youth, when she was still waking up in life and finding her bearing. Lovingly she unraveled the list. She felt such tenderness for that young thing. So passionate, unstoppable, ...

I didn’t take the road to skinny living, in a hard shell. To preaching love, without living it. Instead, I took the road to wide open, to no limits to where spirit could be. In the air, in every different country, in love-making, in mint and basil growing in the garden. In the leaving and the staying. In the paradox, and the whole. In multiple people’s eyes. In the joy of expression (punk, saint alike.) Endless, limitless. Beyond rules. So filled with truth that it is not even called truth. It is not tied down, or written in small black words by men in a sacred book – any of them – written two thousand years ago. Not even limited to goddess, though she is more appealing, with her fierce body, and soft, open soul. I did not take the road there, because my heart told me to unravel. She said, if you do not unravel – you will die. If you do not parse apart the calcified stories – you will wither. And you were meant to shine...

When the quiet settles, like a wool blanket muffling all the sounds when the moon becomes brighter than the sun when voices soften, shoulders relax When the small children have been put to bed when the last late night T.V. show has played when even the owls are nodding we go out after dark We pull on our warm clothes - muffs and downs and having fortified ourselves with hot tea, we go out after dark We are seeking what can only be found there - in the profound darkness in the quiet that comes after all the noise has been dispelled In the deep stillness, without distractions we go there to find peace we go there to find answers, with the wise moon gazing down on us Our worries are less there, our connection to All is greater there we go out after dark to find truth, away from our bright-light lives We go out after dark because we are welcome there lines are blurred; the cool night air brings r...