Sequoia: healing from the roots up

There is always more than one silence. The silence I felt this morning was deep and steeped in grace. Held, and sowing tears; it was a fertile ground for sprouting new life. One silence is like an open book, one like entering a new country. One is so, so tender. And like a little child, we are free to explore and expand into it. One silence is there for encountering the intimacy of your own self. It is a vast, still place. Luscious, rich, ripe, and largely untapped. There is always more than one silence. There can be an uncomfortable silence. But for me, silence has always been comfortable. I am home there. I am tender and soft and real there. The silence, like a friend, wraps around me. One silence is there to help us see our body as it really is. Our beautiful body, cased in our soul. And even more beautiful is freedom and release of inhibitions in our glorious, ripe body. There is always more than one silence. The one just after y...

What is the landscape of longing? What does it look like? It is bare, grey. It is the fields of golden green grasses rippling in the sun. It is every barren place, so starkly beautiful, it takes your breath away. Winter is coming. It is the still, quiet tundra. It is the hot desert, with grains of sand far outnumbering the raindrops. It is the arctic plains, with white snow and caribou. It is the harsh winter – the only way to survive is to burrow into the ground, with smoke and fat. It is the prairies, golden wheat as far as the eye can see. No relief, no variable. It is the ocean. Only shades of blue, swells. Sometimes it is fierce, sometimes it is deceptively calm. There is so much underneath the surface, it is frightening. It is the vast dark of space. Unknowable. It is the fear, and the pleasure of seeing that landscape within yourself, and longing to surrender to it. It is also the lonely, vacant lot, with crumbling cement and fading graffiti. It i...