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...

Grief feels like this, a room with no windows. You know that there is sunlight and warmth outside, but you cannot see it or feel it, because you are locked inside, for the time being.  Your grief folds you inward on yourself.  The world is too big. You must get smaller, so that you can bear your grief, while it stays with you. No one knows how long that will be. It is different for everyone. You wait, you feel. There is nothing else to do. Eventually, you will want windows in your room again. First, you will want a small window to let in a slit of light, which will gradually work its way into your soul, softly. Then you will want more than one window, to open up and begin to air out your  grief. It will always be with you, of course. But you can live with it more easily, after some time has passed. There are some people who live in rooms without windows for so long that they forget what it is like to look into the light, and feel the warm rays o...

Peel back your petals to reveal your heart of matter. Let words sink in to your being.   Embrace your sacredness, walk strongly in your day today.  May the sun shine warmly on you. And may your breath rise up in you and make you feel alive. When I pull away the layers, I am facing only myself. I must choose, then, to love myself. I soar to heights. And I curl up in a ball, in my normal, naked humanity. Expanding into another, of the many rooms, in Goddess’s house. The Bhudda lived in one. The Christ. Human, tree, bird, sky, earth, air, smile – all of these are blessings in and of themselves. I am a part of the healing and heaving of the earth. I am a part of the collective pulsating humanity that weaves brokenness into beauty. That shakes the earth through silent, sacred petitions. Freedom has been lost. But it will always be regained where we open ourselves up to love again. Lately, I have been sorting through the pieces of my "fractured identit...

I have a handful of small madnesses. To other people they may appear to be good choices, or mistakes, or moments of life, which have passed me by. Or moments, which have grabbed on to me so strongly, never releasing their grasp.  They are small madnesses, and we all live with them. They are intrinsic; it is not possible to peel them away from who we are. And they are different for everyone. My handful of madnesses include – opening myself up to several varieties of love, being soft, the way the moon makes me feel, the grip of past love, the irrational dreamy view of every future day, and the stubborn persistence of living in the moment. Her handful of madnesses are, in no specific order - the way she cuts the broccoli florets diagonally instead of vertically, how she stares at the door waiting for him to come home, her seven pairs of sheepswool slippers, a Japanese mattress, and the vodka that she feeds her thriving geranium. His handful of mad...