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.