Diversion

Taking my sitting time to work on a gift for my husband. I found these leaf silhouettes, and I've chosen one and am making a homemade screen-printing-style image on a shirt for him. (I don't mean this as a product endorsement - indeed, I'm not even using the product listed - this is simply where I found the directions to make this project.)

River

I was in a wretched space yesterday with my husband, which is my pattern whenever I restart my work to live in a state of awareness, presence. It's as though the sleeping part of me puts up the nastiest fight it can conjure in an effort to keep me wrapped up in my thoughts rather than awake to what's happening around me.

Husband and son let me sleep in this morning, and I woke to find my husband cleaning up after completing a fair-sized house project I'd asked for his help on. I had been lying in bed for a few minutes upon waking, watching my brain list off all the things in my life I was irritated about, but the scene I came upon, of the finished project and happy family, nipped the pattern in the bud, for today at least.

As tense as yesterday was, today outdid it with beauty by far. Spent our hours together, working on little pet projects, napping, playing in the warm yard, eating great food we'd prepared during the week. In the afternoon, shortly before dinner, we took the boy tricylcing on a path down the street from our house that runs beside old railroad tracks. On a whim, we jutted off into the woods on a path I'd followed with the dog a few years back, and came upon the same pretty little peninsula covered with tall pines that I'd found then. Only today, it was exquisite. It overlooks a river, slow and easy and silent but for birdsong and chipmunk chatter.

The afternoon sun glittered on the river that we had all to ourselves and streamed in ribbons of light through the temple of pines, the light and shadow playing throughout, making the forest and river look like a painting of one of the Old Masters - only a millionfold lovelier, because it was real, it was life.

My husband and the boy went to investigate a little shallow sandy area, and I walked along the banks of the river, admiring the bare ledges under the water that had been washed clean over the eons by the river's slow current. At one point, peering into a washed-out cavern under the roots of a great pine, I found myself face to face with a garter snake sunning itself on the rock the roots grew on.

As I walked back over to join my family after exploring, my husband was pointing out the minnows to our boy, then said "Oh, look! Look at this!", reaching into the clear water and lifting up a baby turtle that was swimming by. The scene was already so wondrous, and then this little creature, this ancient new creature, appeared to punctuate how precious this day was.

I found myself several times imagining some unfortunate event occurring, realizing at the same time that it was simply because the scene, the time we spent there, were full of so much pleasure, such utter beauty in nature, that it was hard for me to simply accept it and treasure it. It felt as if we had come upon Eden itself, and I knew that there were places all over the earth that people come upon similarly, exquisite places on the earth still growing as the earth originally fashioned them, the forests still standing, the waters still clean.

Sweet Day

Went out tonight, rested and calm after an idyllic day spent with my family. Peaceful, connected sit tonight, but a lot of self-distraction against writing about it now. Not sure why.

Tuned in to my sense of the web I have written of before. This tool has been coming to mind frequently of late, helping me to return again and again to the balance I wish to cultivate in my life. I believe that sitting and reflecting on my sits regularly has helped the web exercise to resurface as a part of my daily life, and also, I believe, the fact that I am again listening to Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now daily, which is such a powerful support in remaining present and grounded.

Tonight, sensing the web brought me immediately into awareness of my own visibility in the dark yard; the daylily and milkweed garden beside the back porch suddenly transformed into a potential hiding spot that I could crouch behind for cover.

Walked, slowly and silently, out towards the apple tree, sat down under it. Listened to the crickets, felt the cool air hugging me. Reflected on the day, full of so many pleasures: sleeping in, knowing my boy and husband were getting time together, only cooking one meal today, napping on the bed in the afternoon, dinner with my husband's family, and our sweet bedtime, the boy finally getting his wish to have his father snuggle with us when we go in to bed. In fact, my husband did the entire bedtime routine with him tonight as well, for the first time in their lives (I could also say the boy accepted my husband's participation in it for the first time), and I only joined them on the way to bed. The boy lay so happily snuggled between us, his face glowing with a silent smile, the picture of perfect contentment, a happy little being. He turned to me and wrapped his little arm around my neck, but turned back toward his father over and over again, as if to check that he was still there. Then his eyes slowly closed, and he drifted quietly off to sleep more quickly than I can remember him doing in months.

Now my husband is playing an Uwe Rosenberg game with a new friend, a fellow who brings the same gifts to friendship as my husband does.

A lovely day, full of leisure, restedness, enough time to myself, and surrounded by family. It is a great effort for me to recall the details about which I want to write now. I have yet to discover the source of my distraction, but at this point am content to be lulled by the pleasures of the day, the quiet music playing, and allow myself to drift off to sleep as contentedly as my little man.

Senses

Sat on the porch tonight, the moon shining down on much of the yard. A lot of inner resistance to sitting tonight, probably arising from my longstanding resistance to completing projects. Went through the sense meditation. Focused in on my hearing first - crickets, cars, planes, voices from inside the house, my breathing. Then sight - the view of the yard in the moonlight, the darker areas and lighter areas, the shapes and depth. Then feeling - scanning my body from head to toe, the cool on my face, the itches on my neck, the fullness of my belly, my hands wrapped tightly in the pockets of my fleece, escaping the mosquitoes. Smell - a faint sewage smell, drifting on the light breeze from the north. And taste - heavy leftover dinner flavor, the lighter taste of the breeze over my tongue.

Again tonight, as at the beginning of this year's 30-day sit spot challenge, I was overwhelmed by all of the sensations to be experienced through this exercise. I felt I was floating in a vast universe of sensations, unable to sense them all at the same time. I know from past experience that this ability will come in time; glad to have the perspective of my other experiences.

I would like to continue sitting and writing regularly. I am looking for an anchor, like this completed commitment, to hold me to this routine, which is so grounding and enriching for my life.

Postponement

Exhausted already and heading into our weekly game night. Will sit and write tomorrow. May extend my commitment because of this hiatus.

Changing Paths

Sat in the tree tonight. Got a sappy kiss on my hand on the way up, which I inadvertently brushed against my mouth when I got an itch, so now my lips are sticky with the tree's juice.

There in the pine at night, I felt like a child in a boat for the first time, all the sights and sounds I've been missing since my regular sits, so much to see and sense and feel. The immensity of its body, like a massive building of branches and needles and air, of space and life. The view through its branches, the silent movement of them moving in the night breezes. The presence of the neighboring trees, the buzzing and chirring of the August insects.

Climbed down and walked a roundabout route back to the house. Passed by a newly empty spot in the yard where a rock - once our ceremonial rock, and then our sitting and visiting rock - disappeared from a couple of days ago. It surely left by the hands of one family member or another, who most likely wanted it for a retaining wall or the like. I was suprised to see it gone, but only after witnessing my husband's upset at the inherent dismissal of our opinions did it occur to me to be upset by it, as well.

While chewing on the circumstances of its disappearance tonight, I found myself walking very quickly back toward the house, an email in mind, and recognized the state I get into when I am not looking at the whole picture. Upon seeing my mindstate, I looked toward my sit tree and felt a strong pull to walk back to it. I slowed my walk and returned to it, passing again the now flat earth where we have sat on the rock and played so many times, where my mother sat just last weekend as she held the boy on her lap, sharing her paints with him. I reached up on an urging and touched the tree, and a sense of love and peace, of absolute forgiveness washed over me. The tree was reminding me to lead with my heart, not with my head and my ideas, and my heart was saying to be infinitely gentle, to always be gentle when it is possible. I walked back to the house, taking care to walk slowly as a means of keeping myself present. I watched myself alternate between moments of anger and moments of peace, as I worked to honor the tree's guidance.

Up on the porch, still holding only a tenuous grasp on the choice to deal with this situation with my heart, I knelt down to ask for more support. I remembered, out of the blue, the trip I took into town today to dispose of and also give away a large amount of stuff that has been taking up space in our house. I remembered the sense of freedom, spaciousness, joy that filled me to know I had let go of things I no longer needed and sent them out joyfully into the world.

We did not, of course, wish to be free of our rock, but this memory showed me that I can choose to experience its disappearance in the same mindset. Our instinct to keep things, to hold tightly to objects in our lives, does not serve us as well as releasing them freely into the world does. I can grumble over the trespass, the dismissal of our opinion, the absence of what we both consider to be an old friend. I can also open my heart, listen to my heart, and hear what it is saying: that we do not need that rock, any more than we need any individual objects in our lives. We need each other, and our health, food, love. The necessary things to survive. But objects outside of this description can come and go and we can choose to receive them and let them go with open hands.

I believe it prudent that we bring up the issue with our family anyway, to ensure that we do not wake to discover other cherished objects missing from our yard. But I now have the tools to do so in a measured, peaceful way, rather than with resentment or anger under my words.

Workings (Momentum)

Went out in irritation tonight, a disagreeable evening with my husband borne of his afternoon spent dealing with the hurtful caretaker of one of his charges. Her energy lingered in his memory, souring our time together.

On my way out, I again dismissed my habitual crutch of limiting my time outside with a timer. Walked down into the yard, found myself setting my sights on the dirt road behind our house that links our family's homestead together. I usually don't stray far into the back yard these days, and I don't know that I've ever left our yard during a sit, but tonight there was no question. I needed to walk. Strode briskly up the driveway, across yards in the dark beside the trees, and back down. Walked straight down to the main road, which we never walk on for concern of bodily injury, as car fly by at 60 miles per hour. But it was night, no cars approaching down the long straightaway, so I crossed the road. I realized through the course of this walk that I have been living within confines, keeping routine paths that only strayed within the tight bounds of my daily visits: to the coop, the garden, the sandbox, and paths to the houses. Tonight there were no such walls, and I seemed to be exploring the land around our house anew. Instead of our house, instead of the glowing bay window showing my husband at his painting inside, being the anchor for my time outside, the place I am simply waiting to return to, tonight I was freed entirely to go wherever I would go, no sense of inhibition from property lines, from my usual sense of road safety, from the tug to return indoors to my habits, habits, blind habits.

On the other side of the darkened street, I greeted a young larch that stands there, and which I have often appreciated and admired. I walked up the street, looking at houses I normally only see from the car at some speed. I felt the potential for neighborhood, despite the barrier of the roadway on which we live.

I discovered a grand, tall tree not four houses down from mine, towering over a little side street. Leaves thick and leathery in the dark, it rustled like its own forest in the breeze. I greeted it.

Turned back to home, passed by our house at the call to continue moving, and walked up and around the yards again. Paused in the driveway, the moon in her fullness looking down from beyond the clouds, calling me to stop and be with her. She was like an eye within the shapes of the passing clouds, looking down over her family, her charges. I've been reading Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, full of honor for the work of the lives of women: childbearing and loss, infertility, cooking, loving, raising families, supporting one another, midwifery and healing. Tonight, I saw the moon through the eyes of the story, which echoed what we know of many of our human cultures - the moon as a primal force in our lives, on our bodies. A mother watching over us, an anchor for us into eternity. I knelt down, opened my arms to her, welcoming her more deeply into my life, into my workings. The baby wriggled sleepily in my belly.

While the honor of the midwifery trade is powerful in Diamant's story - and I feel deep gratitude to think of how many women are led into this profession through the influence of her book - it is the work with herbs that has called me, and that spoke to me loudly tonight. As clear as was the directive last night to begin my work in sharing fertility awareness with women, tonight's was a deeper tug, a much more encompassing sense of my potential path, should I choose to take it up.

I have, for some years now, thought that if I ever find my way into a career of sorts, I would hope that it be one that is essential. One which, should our people ever find ourselves thrown out of our comfy universe back into a life from and of the earth (whether from war, flooding, civil unrest, etc), would be work that would help to sustain us. Trapping, cooking, healing in all its forms, midwifery, carpentry, leadership, wisdom. Many skills would aid in survival. Healing with herbs and food, which I have an innate interest in, certainly would have a place.

Walked on through the yards, feeling and knowing myself as I have not for years, an almost forgotten quality in myself - competence. I knew tonight, taking and giving myself solitude, that I have it in me to be a healer. When I rush myself from one task to another, when I deny myself and am denied by circumstances the grounding influence of solitude, I lose touch with my own strength, my fortitude, my ability to be certain of anything other than my own weaknesses. But tonight, in the dark with the moon as my only companion, I felt I was reaching into the depths of my memories of who I have been in this life, and found that, given the space and time, I have the same confidence in me that I knew ages ago, in another lifetime. The same surety that I can accomplish my purpose.

As I returned to our house down the driveway, my two dogs - the one who was lost to us last year, and my childhood dog, dead many years ago - trotted along beside me.

Night Talking

Came home today. Tonight, walked out into the dark drizzle, knew I didn't need a timer on this night to let myself relax into my time outside. Called gently down to the yard, and walked out away from the house. Passed the apple tree, paused outside the coop, listening to the rain on the compost bin, the blackberry leaves. Directed to the fire pit my husband and son built for me last week, ringed with the angular, broken rocks dug up over time from under the earth of our yard. A beautiful pit. One large, flat stone laid in the ground on the eastern edge as a stepping stone, an altar. Walked to the pit, carrying the sage and lighter I'd known to carry out with me. Smudged the pit, myself, giving thanks to the sage, to the fire. Crawled into the circle in the ground, knowing that this is counter to my relationship with fire places but feeling clearly and powerfully that this was what I was to do.

I curled myself within the ring of the fire pit, smelling both the chickens who love to visit the raw earth there and the ashes of the fire my family shared in it last week. On my side, the ring of rocks around me, I felt as safe as if I were in the earth itself, safe as a baby in its womb. I remembered our sweats down south with our spiritual community there, our Teoshpe, the power and sure safety of our sacred fires within the dome of the lodge. I felt cradled by Creator, cradled by the earth, in the center of all light and goodness.

*My time away from them has dimmed my memory of the term. Will enter it when it returns to me.

Clearing

Couldn't post this writing last night, as I didn't have access to the computer.


Walked out tonight once the boy was asleep and I was ready to rouse myself from the bed. Phone rang, husband calling to report one chicken missing from our coop when he shut them in for the night. After we hung up, I settled myself on the cushion on the porch. My comfortable sense of security was stirred up from the small touch of uncontrollable loss - potential, at least; our chickens have gone missing once before only to have turned up roosting in the branches of the forest.

Listening again to the buzzing, chirring, clicking insects of the night, it was abundantly clear why we humans were more in touch with nature when we all lived our lives out of houses. When we went to sleep each night surrounded by such choruses, it was a matter of course that we would know who calls in what season, etc. It is only now, when most of us shut our wooden doors and glass windows to the heat, the cold, the bugs, the dark, that we find it remarkable for someone to be familiar with the nuances of the seasons.


Looking up to the shimmying ends of branches above me, the moon's hazy glow through the clouds, my mind almost quiet, I felt myself talking directly with Creator, open to the world, to messages, to my source, to my depths. Felt like a sudden openness, welcome relief from my small, personal world of worries and desires.


A child's cry drifted out the windows of the neighbors' house, then a man's hard voice. I was again shown my recent vacation from the hard realities, the lull I've been living in, magical days spent with my son and my mother, sheltered from any direct exposure to most forms of suffering. I thought of my husband's days, spent as a social worker, and silently tried to conjure an image of what kind of work I could do now, what kind of help I can offer. And into my head came my midwives' invitation to teach a class on fertility awareness, a woman's way of becoming in touch with her body's cycles which I have found hugely empowering and which, I have told the midwives, I feel every one of us deserves to learn in adolescence. Perhaps this, then, is where my work lies.


Looking up at the trees, smelling the wind, feeling the closeness of the dwellings, the adventures everywhere, the strangers everywhere, drifting through my heart came mists of my years spent in the city, my friendships and relationships from those times.

The Path

Staying at my mom's in the city. Rough time putting the boy down, my impatience, exhaustion, need to be alone thwarting any attempts he made to distract me into playfulness.

Slept for a bit after he drifted off. Woke up and knew I needed to sit, but rested a bit more, on the edge of sleep. A few minutes later, it was suddenly entirely clear to me that either I get up and go outside in that moment or I would fall asleep and miss my sit for the night. Up I got.

I've been remembering that I have the option to follow these messages, this guidance, daily. One could, I know, follow them every moment, walk the path Creator lays for us, live as "God's hands" in the world. I have been friends with a woman who strives to do so, to see and to let go of her own personal desires, opinions, anger. To release her ego's control over her choices and instead follow the guidance she receives in every matter. To live following her Inner Vision, as Tom Brown would put it. I feel that to make this choice is part of the ultimate fulfillment of my own path. I know already that the guidance is available to me in nearly every moment, from whether to have a second helping of food to how to comport myself in disagreements with my husband for our mutual benefit. When I give it a moment, the path is usually made clear to me, but until very recently I have been forgetting to even consult this guidance, and have instead been giving priority to only my own wants and opinions.

To live this way, with this discipline, is so contrary to our wider culture - the mainstream, at least - which makes it seem more out of reach, more difficult to attain. And yet I know that people on spiritual paths of all kinds have been living in such a way for much of human history. The Iroquois maxim to consider the impact of every decision on the seventh generation into the future is part of this path. Walking the path of awareness in the meditative sense is part of it. Yet seeing people in my life who are actually living in this way is the most powerful frame of reference for me. My friend, in particular. I can see her personal sacrifices, I have benefitted from her resulting generosity, and I have witnessed the power she is gifted in return for her labors. As she is naturally in communication with Creator all throughout the day, she is a seer, and has helped to guide many people with the insights and comprehension granted her by Creator, the universe. I think that perhaps we all are equal tools for Creator in life, each with her or his own sort of powers. I believe that the day will not come that I am able to offer my own highest gifts until I have undertaken this path, the path of following my guidance far more than I do now, following it by second nature.

Sat out tonight on my mother's porch. Four different kinds of buzzing, clicking insects filled every space with sound. The hum of cars and trucks in the background. Electronic voices and music seeping out into the night through open windows. My belly full and round with the baby, my mood still tight with residual irritation from the bedtime struggle. The moon lifted herself gently above the branches as I sat. The trees in neighbors' yards tower over my mother's house and yard, so much taller than ours in the country.

Trading

I made a deal with the spirit world, Creator, the universe today. A small one, but significant to me.

On a recent canoe trip with my father and my boy, I found, half buried in a sandy portion of the riverbed, a small, smooth, flat shard of clay. I cannot help but believe that the clay is a broken piece of pottery that was shaped by human hands ages ago, that people used it beside or in that river, that somehow it found its way beneath the sands of the riverbed. I came upon it a few days after very heavy rains, which had, perhaps, unearthed it from where it had been resting.

The veracity of my beliefs aside, this flat little triangle of rust-colored clay holds great weight for me. In its presence on the windowsill above my sink, in the experience of holding it in my hands, I feel graced by tangible evidence of our past. Of our old connection to the earth, from the days when we used the gifts she provided easily, building our vessels, our belongings, from resources that did not harm her either in their making or in their decaying. I feel connected to the person - most likely a woman, if our histories are correct - who fashioned that particular vessel out of that clay. To her family, to her village, to the plants and animals they knew and understood. It helps me to believe, to truly trust, that there was a time when all humans knew how to live off the earth. To envision our people knowing how to survive, raise our children, pass on our cultures to future generations, independent of everything but our local communities and the earth.

I questioned, that day, my decision to bring it home with me. Was its rightful place not there in the river, where its original owner had left it? And yet, what a gift it is to me to hold it and look at it, to have an ancient scrap of my species' history in my own home, reminding me of who we have been, who we can be.

We returned to the river today, and as I packed for the trip, I took it off the windowsill in preparation to return it to the sands I'd taken it from. In holding it again, I again felt its significance to me, the medicine in it for me, and I longed to keep it in the house. So I offered to trade for it. I touched the earth, waited for a feeling, a knowing of what would be a fair offer.

In exchange for this piece of our past, I have committed to sit outside and to write here every day for a week. Perhaps these will be the hearty, shapely writings I prefer to post, or perhaps they will more resemble notes or vague impressions. But I will do it for a week, in thanks for the pottery.


Tonight, after a long day riding on the gentle waters of that river, I sat out in our back yard under a bright moon, beside the little cherry sapling we planted two years ago. I lay back on the ground in the dark, listening to an urge that I generally dismiss out of hand, not wanting the dew to moisten my clothing. I have been lately humoring these little urges more, these whims, so vibrant in childhood, that add so much to our lives and that so often are silenced and ignored, to our detriment, in our honed, convenience-seeking adulthood. I lay back on the grass, felt the moisture on my back, and gazed up from my new vantage point. I found myself looking up through the cherry, where I have only ever looked down at the little thing. The night sky and moon shone beyond the darkness of its leaves.

The branches it now feeds and raises to the sky are the same that it will hold up in twenty years, with any luck. Today they seem so haphazard, as such small amounts of growth have generated each, but they are the shape of what is to come. They already tell us the tree's plans for growth, for shape; they have only to change in size, weight, shadow.

Shimmers

Up this morning with the boy. Instead of our usual routine of letting the chickens out and coming back in to start breakfast and do cleaning, I brought my coffee out and we sat together under the apple tree, the chickens off searching the neighbors' yards for bugs. The sun was still just coming up, flickering on and off our faces as the apple's leaves danced in the breeze. Dew on the grass, the yard shimmering, like the first morning in the world.

The light Sunday traffic left the world quiet, room enough for birdsong and wind. Knowing how many other folks were also enjoying a day of free time lifted the dampening effect I sometimes experience from knowing that the blessing of leisure time is so unevenly allotted among humans.

Dismissing my invitation for him to "mow" so I could sit in the chair and enjoy my coffee in stillness, the boy preferred to snuggle on my lap and watch the day come. He discovered the tiny black and gold beads sewn to my skirt, but, to his chagrin, could not convince me to let him pull them off and play with them. So we sat quietly together in the perfect morning, he fingering his little discovered treasures, I stroking his clean, soft hair that glowed golden-white in the morning sun, both of us adoring the beauty we beheld.

Later in the morning, we joined friends and their family at a beach to celebrate the 2nd birthday of their daughter, our boy's playmate. A friend of the family, an avid kite-flyer, had made simple mylar kites for each of the children. He set them up in the sand behind our gathering in a loose zig-zag, their strings buried in the sand to anchor them. The effect was a marvel to behold. Seven shimmering splashes of color hovering above us, golden tails dancing and jumping in the wind, rustling their kite-music above us all day. It was such an announcement of celebration, of joy in being alive, that flurry of kites in the sky.

My parter and our boy spent much of the morning together, and I found myself with a rare opportunity to be alone. Our gathering was in full swing, everyone enjoying each other, and all of the children well-accompanied. I brought my then-damp towel out behind our bags and kiddie tents and laid it on the hot sand under the kites. I lay back on the ground, the sun warming me after my chilly swim, and looked up at the kites. They'd been given more slack to help them catch the wind and were higher up above us than when they'd started, just small patches of color speckling the blue sky. I closed my eyes, listening to their fluttering, to the family talking, laughing, happy together, the gulls crying their songs. The sun was like a hot blanket on my chilly skin, and the baby shifted in my belly. I thought back to the early morning under the apple tree, such perfect stillness and contentment, and loved the equivalent perfection of this boisterous moment in the world.

Later, I walked down to the water to join my family. They were sitting, the boy wet and chilled and perfectly content in his father's lap, at the edge of the water, both of them delighted in a game they'd invented. The boy's little wrinkled hands were cupped within my husband's cupped hands, both of them laughing as they tried to catch the water as the waves washed up and around them.