I didn't dream I'd spend a recent afternoon making pesto but now eight cups of packed basil leaves, walnuts, garlic cloves, Parmesan and olive oil chopped, minced, grated, pulsed and frozen fill six containers ready for future pizza crust, pasta and veggies.
As I cleaned dishes I thought of women whose lives were spent in the kitchen and garden, planting, growing, staking, picking, shelling, cooking, baking, chopping, dicing, slicing and the many mouths fed. How did they do it? Really! How did they do it?!
At day's end, I lay on a blanket in the grass reflecting on the afternoon. Reflecting - a verb not in the above list. Did the women on my family tree reflect or just move on to what was next?
I've heard someone in my past refer to their personal energy dips as 'sinking spells.' I wonder if they reflected during these spells or if this was the bodies way of saying "Stop. Ponder. Slow down."
My blanket in the grass allows me to sink for a spell as I feel my body sink into Mother Earth where I reflect, rest and am held.
The cool chill these recent mornings hasn't just awakened me. I've
company in the cricket kin pulsing their rhythmic sounds as the rising
sun's angle lights the oak with a softer glow. These first signs of
Summer's shift find me relieved.
Come this time every year I welcome the change.
I've planted more seeds than I tend in my little raised beds now a
tangle of tomatoes and I've unplanted seeds still in my possession. I get so focused tending the outer, I gradually neglect the
inner.
When I'm watering, weeding and fertilizing
which slacks with summer's passing, I think of farmers long ago who tended the outer for survival. Sundays were set aside for the
tending of the inner, yet for many Sunday was about looking toward the
future, the sweet by and by rather than being in the here and now.
Their here and now held diseases we've conquered and drought without
grocery stores.
Today Sundays are set aside for the
NFL, NBA and PGA and many live on warp speed in the here and now The now must be new and and the here is always there.
How
is it we as a culture have become so focused on the outer and so
obsessed with fast? At times I feel my head spin. Is our always 'on,'
fast forward culture a response partially to the harsh, hard times of
our ancestors? What is risked when the Inner's neglected and the here
and now always somewhere else?
I don't know about you but I risk loosing the
capacity for soulful appreciation and thoughtfulness, for listening,
really listening to depth, relationship and relatedness. I risk loosing
me.
Signs of Summer's shift, cool air and cricket
sound return me to Now, remind me of who I am. In this now I realize I too
tend the outer to survive, survive on a soul level.
"Don't let the noise of the world keep you from the Earth you love."
I heard the above as I stood at the door last night around 10:00 trying to decide whether to lie in the small patch of grass we call yard. With the moon overhead my first thought was 'I'll do it tomorrow night.' This was quickly followed by 'Tomorrow night clouds may hide the moon.'
So bed sheet in hand (yes, I keep an old sheet near the door for times such as this) I went outside and laid on the hard, dry Earth with the nearly full moon visible through the overhead limbs and leaves.
Lying on Mother Earth is medicine, medicine I had not taken in weeks. Ilaythere and said aloud, "Mother Earth, I have missed you so. Between the heat, lack of rain and now the neighbor's pool pump noise, I have allowed these things to come between you and me."
I pondered the parallels of Sun's heat and the heated, reactive exchanges of the times as well as the soul drought in many people's lives and the noise with which we are bombarded unaware
So much if we allow it keeps us from Mother Earth. So much if we allow it keeps us from our very selves.
"Don't let the noise of the world keep you from the Earth you love."
These colorful Harambee necklaces made by former child soldiers and war orphans caught my eye last night in the Gulch at Casablanca Coffeeduring the "Passport" event. Proceeds from sales go toExile International whose by-line is "'empowering children of war to become leaders of peace."
This morning I read that line again and thought of children in America. Far from being forced or conscripted into war like children in the Congo or Uganda, American children are also children of war. For a generation many of our children have been covertly scripted through violent video games and films to choose war and conflict as a reaction before dialogue and thought.
As much as I love America there is much here covertly creating a people of war. This Fall tv viewers are offered the opportunity to watch the glamorization of war hosted by by former General Wesley Clark as celebrities paired with military personnel are put through mock military training exercises in the controversial "Stars Earn Stripes."
Closer to home I'm still dumbfounded over the sign I saw this summer an hour east of Nashville advertising a Machine Gun Shoot. Yes, a machine gun shoot. Why would anyone go to a machine gun shoot unless they felt powerless or paranoid.
Is this who we are - a people so easily controlled that some of us need to shoot machine guns to feel power or watch celebrities compete in military training in order to get personally pumped from the sofa or recliner?
The word Harambee is Swahili for 'come together.' Time will tell whether we as individuals in this amazing country can ultimately move beyond fear and come together in a desire for understanding and community despite our differences.
Otherwise many tomorrows into the future, I imagine an African child inspired to form an organization for empowering American children so they may become leaders of peace here at home.
Contrary to these cooler nights and days, I'm fairly certain Summer isn't over. Yet this week at dusk I've watched bats and lightening bugs knowing their season is nearer ending than beginning.
This is the summer I feared fireflies were diminishing. Their numbers seemed on the decline. Suddenly mid-June they announced themselves as if to say, "Just because flowers, trees and people are speeding up doesn't mean we are yet. We are right on time."
And they were. They filled my yard and a few still do. I watch and joy fills me.
This is the summer we saw tens of thousands of bats in June at the Nickajack Lake's maternity cave thanks to winning a trip at January's Sandhill Crane Festival. Two TWRA representatives whose job is to keep tabs on Tennessee's bats took us along on their pontoon boat to the mouth of the cave at dusk. As the sun set and a full moon rose, bats quiettly streamed from the cave for forty minutes.
And I can't forget last weekend. Just last weekend, I counted two dozen swallowtails on the butterfly bushes Jerry planted two years ago. His vision was to create a butterfly garden. Mother Earth responded as one part of our yard overflowed for the first time in four years with Queen Ann's Lace, the flower so loved by swallowtails in their caterpillar stage.
Yes, this summer I'm navigating menopause and disconnects yet joy has periodically filled me.
Joy fills me and feels me. Joy brings a smile to my face. Joy is the energy expanding in my chest, stretching the skin beneath my breasts. When even I don't feel me, joy feels me reminding me of who I am.
Bats, butterflies and bugs may be departing for a season but within me they will never leave. They may be departing for reasons related to pesticides and the myriad of chemicals created in science labs, chemicals now flooding dear Earth. I so hope not yet if they are parting I can still say with gratitude and love that they will never depart my heart after this summer.
As I write this tears come to my eyes tears of joy, not sorrow for deep down inside I realize this is one reason I've had to go more slowly this summer and stay tuned in at a slower pace. Rather than rushing around, getting things done as I'm accustomed I've been forced to sit, be and see. Experiencing what's labeled as small in Nature will now always stay with me.
What have you experienced this summer that will bring you joy as the season shifts?
While eating lunch recently, I happened to look down to see these, the smallest of shells and tiny twin pine cones on the brown deck at my feet. These objects hardly the size of my fingernail immediately got my attention. The shell that once held one of earth's earliest animals intrigued me with its spiraling pattern without and within. And taking a closer look, I recognized flower shapes in the tree seeds.
What was the message in these simple objects from Nature, homes to seed and creatures, homes to life?
Days later, I hold these small objects and hear:
Tree life, water life hold messages of be-ing life.
Being life. BeHold.
You too are home
What does it mean to be home?
For
me being home means dropping out of my head and into my body. When I
do this I am immediately present and at peace regardless of what's
stirring outside me. When I do this I am at home unless there's something unattended stirring inside me.
For the past few weeks, I've been intermittently at home. After taking time off to write and instead ending up with aches and a sore throat, I became disappointed and mad. I struggled for days, dosing myself with herbs and remedies that kept me going, going further and further away from myself as I resisted feeling bad.
Today I hold these tiny homes to life and listen once again.
When I move mindfully through my life, I hear and see the messages of magic and wisdom embedded in the small. They inform me of my path, my inner and my outer path. When I am awake on my inner path my outer path is revealed. And in those times when I'm not awake and struggling, the smallest of things outside me speak reminding me...
The center of Summer's last hosta blossom reminds me of the threads
offered us each day, threads of light pouring from Creation's black hole, threads entrusted to us the Weavers whether aware or not.
Where do I begin? Where have I been for the past month or more? Why has it taken me so long to sit down in the room where I feel most centered and write?
Then I realize it's not that I've not written in the past few weeks. I have filled a journal with notes and noticings none of which are complete. Today as I get on-line to write of the morning glory and moon flower seeds, I realize my journal is like one big seed pack filled now with internal flowers important to me.
A friend some time ago sent me a message that went something like 'You write to be read, don't you?'
I thought, 'No I really write to live.' Being engaged and tuned in to my experience keeps me alive.
Today I sit down with my laptop in the room where I tend the seeds in my journal, to find and feel the ones that want to be planted today. I feel what I wanted to say but didn't to my friend. I feel alive. I am connected in a way that's only been intermittent lately. So I begin where I intended with the literal seeds that caught my eye and what I recorded mornings ago.
July 24, 2012
I just noticed the morning glory and moon flower seeds. The bright purples and blues of the packaging caught my eye as I walked past them in the kitchen. Immediately I wonder: 'Is it negligent to plant them now in late Summer's heat? Is it negligent to plant them when they may only bloom briefly if that before a Fall frost?
I hear: 'All that matters is that you plant us with love.'
So I hold these seeds packs with love. This brings such a smile to my face because I feel myself sending them love. It really doesn't matter if I plant them or not. As long as I hold them in love, they already blossom in the garden of my heart. August 16, 2012
Twenty-three days later I realize the message in this small story is big. It relates to everything. It doesn't matter if I develop the ideas in my journal. What matters most is that I hold these story seeds in love. It doesn't really matter how much I get done today. What matters most is that I hold each moment and myself in love whether I'm doing or being. What matters most is that I feel and grow love in the garden of my heart and allow the Shift to unfold in me, a Shift to feeling love each moment in the seed pack of my life.
