The Summer Solstice, or the Fulfillment of Promise

There are people strewn across the green lawn
They are draped in flowing gowns

But there is  no trace of Victorian refinement here
These are the people of the earth.

Upon their heads
flowers woven through
circles of willow
Blooming crowns
Alive with the scent of blossoms
I hear the lilting melodies of a flute somewhere

Children
Looking more like fairies
Ring laughter in and out of
Nature so lush and green
She hides them completely

Gaia is queen today
The human spirit pays reverence
To her beauty
Knowing the summer solstice
is her Day in the Sun

There is a soft joy pulsing
Through this place
Harsh tones, the battle cry of the hurried and worried
Are not heard here tonight
The only thing I can think

Is that I don't deserve to be here.
My eyes ache to turn themselves from such unabashed beauty
I am too messy for such grace
I have thrown too many of those harsh words
as I bumbled my way through the day
overwhelmed and confused by little ones tired screams
These people feel like a different species to me

But there is something else
I hear it threading it's way through self deprecating thoughts
"It only takes a seed..."

Surrounded by green promises
Spiraling wildly from a
seed desire
buried
in earth darkness
I am living in the midst of God’s classroom and the lesson today is this

God only asks that we offer the seed of what is desired
And grace will grow that seed
Unfold that promise into its spilling beauty
Tonight…here… I walk
In a garden of promises
And now I hear it again

The whisper winding through thought
"You
are a garden of promises
made full
by your faith"

The flower crowns upon flower souls, gentle and beautiful, delicate and fragrant in their love
...unfold that promise...

And on this, the longest night of the year, alive with the ceremonial rhythm of drum and the haunting notes of wind given voice ,
…A garden of promises…
among the flower people dancing their worship for the great privilege of living in this garden we call Earth,
…Made full by your faith…

I am feeling that maybe
Just maybe
…It takes only a seed…
I will one day dance among them

She Wore Pink Today

Pale  pink
Runs smooth
On her skin
Her hair swept swiftly away
Firmly told
To stay in place
So that the sea
Kept in her eyes
Can shimmer
Its secrets
So her neck
Arching
Can offer
its supple grace
So that as she dances her story
and her beauty,
Painting herself across my eyes,
I can see her Smile.

Dear Sister

Dear sister,
I remember.
I remember who we are together, what the love that binds us looks like when it flows into this world.
Imagination, love for what each of us contributes, playfulness, ,inspiration.
When we played, when we created together, it was like riding a magnificent wave and we were dancing on top.
We did not meet with expectation or comparison or social etiquettes. There were no wrong or rights with us. There was only time stretching long before us asking to be filled.
We were queens of our realm, sister, and no one else ever entered. We tried, but no one ever did...

I know you know the story of our parting from your place standing young as I flung far childhood's crown and walked away forever.

They were cruel you know, about our games. Imagination and heart are liabilities in the real world.
Most people called that my growing up.
But what I know was that that was my growing closed, drawing heavy curtain down on the voices of heart that spoke lively in the mind. It became lonely so I replaced them with everyone else's voices and you'd think that would make it feel full but it was even lonelier.
It would lead me into a moment in college where I would put pen to blank paper, try to lay down heart as black ink and the great expanse of empty white would ask me to feel but I couldn't and I would have cried if I could have but the river had long run dry.

But Sister, my river flows now, and the fields are beginning to green again. It moves through the chest and down the face at the brazen beauty that paints itself across this world.
The voices are back too, my voices. They help me create worlds again. They help me play again.
And there is a happy ending to this story, because in the losing I Know what was lost and when Found there appeared a depth unknown before.

It has meant alot of time alone with those voices learning to Hear all over again.

But I remember sister. And when we create together, when we painted birds against sunset and I watched the pink feather through your gold as everyone else doggedly tried to wash brush to ensure it didn't happen to theirs, I watched you softly play with it and it inspired me...
I felt the wave call again.

I know my river will make waves again because I am returning to our realm, cleaning cobwebs, placing tarnished crown upon head once more

and I hold this wish dear and true sister
That when the dust of adult life settles we will return there together again, not as the children we were but as who they dreamed they would be.

Return of the Sun(son)

Easter Sunday

In Christian belief, The Son Day.

Renewal.

Rebirth.

Resurrection.

A time to peel back the lid

And See in a new way.

Re-Vision

First,

The autumnal harvest on which we feasted

Filled ourselves brimming

On the experiences, the desires of yesterday

Then the winter rest

The cocoon

Darkness wrapping itself around

Digesting us

Bathing us in the prophecies

Of what the feast of yesterday will become

It pulls us from the inside out

To Re-form

in the image of Our Heart's Longing

And then

pupa splits

Wings of tomorrow unfold

To take us to our destiny

What was only Promise Yesterday

We Become Today

Winged Glory

Let us Re-Joy-ce

Storytelling:Secrets of Spring Part 1, The First Winter

Occasionally Noelle and I tell stories together. As a way to remember them, I am going to begin recording them here.

One spring morning a little bird sang on a branch and a little bunny hopped in the grass below.

"What are you doing little bunny?" asked the bird

"I am hunting for Easter eggs that I have seen the two legged children collecting! They look so beautiful"

"Ah yes, Easter" said the bird "the colorful Spring celebration. Little bunny, do you know the secret Spring reveals to us?"

"You mean like the surprises in the eggs?" asked the bunny

"Yes, kind of like that. The egg reminds us of new life. New life is all around us now. Would you like to hear the story of the First Winter little bunny?"

"Oh yes please!"

And the bunny settled into a nice patch of clover to listen to the bird sing him a story.

"In the Beginning Time life was new and fresh. The earth was beautiful and green, just as it is now. Flowers, bees, butterflies, flowing water and warm sun washed over the land.

In time the sun became warmer and many of the trees and plants began producing fruit and seeds. All the animals and even two leggeds ate the abundant and delicious plants and lived happily.

Then one day the air changed. It became crisper and cooler. The sun still shone but not for as long. The plants dropped all of their fruit, which the animals collected and saved away since there was much too much to eat at once. Leaves turned lively colors of red gold and orange. It seemed a celebration and the people were happy with the beauty that surrounded them.

But then something strange began to happen. All the leaves dropped from the trees and the plants wilted and died into the ground. No more fruit or nuts or seeds were made. Even the green grass turned brown and lay down quiet. The sun disappeared for longer and longer stretches of time and the air grew colder and colder…

The animals did not understand what was happening. Why was their beautiful home fading away? Why was everything dying? They became sad and scared and retreated into caves and underground to escape the cold.

One night their fear turned to wonder as something magical shone through the dark sky. We're the stars falling?

White covered all, a canvas washed clean.

The animals ate the food they had saved and continued to wait. They still did not understand but the white blanket had brought Hope that all was not lost.

One day the air became a bit warmer. The white began to pull back, revealing new green beneath. Delicate flowers graced stems and the animals left their nests and dens to stretch in the warmth. Life began again.

And this is the Promise of Spring, little bunny-- the return of life and abundance and warmth. The promise that the cold dying back and washing clean of winter will always yield a re-newed life."

"Yes I think I feel it," said the little bunny and hopped away into the spring grass feeling newer and lighter and filled with promise.

Walking Gardens

I was thinking on my life, on the turns it has taken.

On the way it looked only 5 years ago and the way it looks now.

On the way God works in mysterious and miraculous ways.

And how once the mists of mystery burn away, the delight that comes when we See where we have been brought.

5 years ago I was in medical school. A dream to bring hope and light to faraway places I had been told had too little of that.

My life consisted of black and white text

the sterile whiteness of laboratories and hospitals,

much collaboration and little connection

I lived in the realm of the Mind.

The Heart beat softly and patiently in the shadows

When I was a young girl in school

I would write poetry to the tune of chalk on black board

Come home and run fingers over ivory, the breath of harmony filling me

I would stand in front of audiences with friends, laugh and speak in strange timbres as we played life on stage

And then I decided that was all child’s play and I put it away in its proper drawers and I went on to more adult things

Until one day, a soul came to me, asking me to help pave a way for her into this world

Asking me to show her what is beautiful

Asking me to show her what is important

Asking me to show her what is Right and Good

And I looked around at all the black words and white walls

And it flashed dull

I heard the faintest beating of a long forgotten friend

And this was the beginning of my Breaking

And now, I find myself surrounded by gardens and flowers and trees budding Spring

And I see how these little flowers so fragile

can only bend so much

And I think of myself

Because although I do like to think myself strong

The truth is my spirit is like these flowers

Growing underneath the shade of Strong Oak

Their perfume lost

If sniffed too hard

I offer my thanks to those who will do those big things in the world, travel to far off places to Make Right

But this is not how I was made

I was made for poetry and music and dancing

I was made Mother to share it

I was made delicately and carefully

Fantastically and Uniquely

and I will Honor my Creator by Honoring

Their Creation.

I will walk among these gardens

And give thanks for the strong trunks

And the whisper of petals

A Pair of Pants and Redemption

I was cleaning today.

And Sterling came in and poured himself a very full glass of water. 

And then spilled it all over the floor.

I felt frustrated, like messes were happening faster than I could clean them.  I felt resentment well up inside me at the thought that I was responsible for cleaning everyone’s messes. 

And then a  thought came. 

Perhaps this is not my mess to own. 

I guided Sterling to a towel and then to the mess where he happily wiped the water clean. 

And the floor shone. 

Newly washed.

And I realized it at that moment –

what a  mess is

A part of the journey

And it is the process of making clean, re-righting,

re-writing,

that is as important as the exploring and creating that made the  mess,

as important as the awareness of the mess.

We must own each part.

If in the creating we feel our mastery, it is in the mess we feel our vulnerability, our imperfection.  In this ordinary kitchen of mine, looking at water spilled across the floor, feeling the tiredness of another mess, and then seeing little hands re-new that linoleum, I see the entire mythology of our human journey unfolding. 

Paradise, The Fall, Redemption.

We could turn away from our imperfection, we could refuse to see it because it feels too painful, makes us feel too open, too vulnerable.

Or we could drown in the mess, in our inability to achieve Goodness.  We could wear our dirt as a badge of inadequacy and fallibility. We could construct a garment of unworthiness and never again gaze at the stars and dream…

But then we will never reap what we have sown, and there are so many gifts in the harvest. 

I have been learning a new skill.  Yesterday, I was sure I was going to master sewing this pair of pants.  I had made all the mistakes, learned all the parts.  This was going to finally work easily, smoothly, masterfully.  A garment of worthiness for a very worthy little soul. 

And it didn’t.  Another mistake.  A different one that I had not even been able to foresee.  It seemed to manifest out of the blue.  And I felt crushed.  All that time, all that effort, all that fabric.  For nothing.  I threw the little pair of pants into the basket and vowed I was done. 

I would leave it. 

A little pair of pants with roots deep in the river of human experience, a touchstone into the shadows of  failure,

inadequacy

Begging me to see this moment for what it was,

a question…

When we Fall, what do we do?

Those pants, having been thrown angrily aside just moments before, started to take a different form.  I began to see all the beautiful seams and the intentions and love that went into that little pair of pants made my a mother’s hands and heart. 

And I could not just throw that away. 

They could be redeemed. 

I could be redeemed.

From this place of imperfection, utter vulnerability at the realization of the magnitude of imperfection,

from this place of giving up

New Hope was born.

If in the mess we are broken, it is in the cleaning we are remade.

So I cut

And I sewed

I began to wipe clean.

And I watched as new pants were made.

A new me made.