Stone Walker

Image by Pezibear from Pixabay

 

Every stone was different. It kept you slightly unbalanced to move from one stone to the next. I could almost circle the whole island by walking its stone border. I say almost because there was one stone, a boulder really, that blocked the path. So many of us climbed it and stood over the lake, it’s dark, sometimes choppy waters imperceptibly worried the giant piece of granite ever smoother over the decades. The circle completed with a moment of contemplation.

The stones near the ocean were different. They were smoother and made slippery by the water’s incessant waves. But still I walked them to nowhere in particular. Each step was a test to see if I could put my full weight upon it or only lightly land, using it as a steppingstone to the next. This directionless journey was full of near slips and slides or being thrown off balance by loose stones. Though there was no destination, no completion except returning to flat ground, somehow moving over those stones moved something in me.

I crossed the stream in the woods by way of the stones that rose just above the waterline. It was a small stream in the woods behind the school. It flowed all the way into town. I had to go deep into the woods to reach it, to walk its stones, to hear the music the water created moving over and around them. It was like a dance to pick my way across and back again. The to and fro always brought me back to myself.

My childhood is mapped with the stones I walked upon, the stones I climbed, the stones I fell on, the stones that supported me during those times I needed to flee my reality. It’s been years since I walked the stones. I suppose the last time was in the mountains a decade ago. The Southern California granite beige instead of Nova Scotia grey. Stones that weren’t scattered by the glaciers of the last ice age but protrude from the ground, always there.

I miss the stones. On my altar are two small ones from Nova Scotia. I never gathered any from the mountains where we once had a cabin. But I have walked the ground of this place. I have moved over the landscape and mapped my last 20 years in steps that have turned here into home.

The Season and Year of Letting Go

 

Photo by Autumn Mott Rodeheaver on Unsplash

In this season of letting go, I feel as though we have been living in a year of letting go. That’s what 2020 has been. It’s been about clarity of vision, but this virus, Nature has been teaching us to let go.
 
What does it mean to let go? The best way to answer that is to look at the things we’ve had to let go of. We’ve let go of a way of life, loved ones, hopes and dreams. Though we are in the liminal space of this letting go, we do catch glimpses of what may be.
 
Letting go can be a momentary release or it can take months or even years. It’s not easy, but it is necessary for a new way of life and other hopes and dreams to come alive. In the case of loved ones, to let them go helps us move forward and embrace them in a new way.
 
Letting go is followed by a period of disorientation. It’s that stepping off the cliff into darkness I often talk about. Sometimes we wish we could hold onto the old ways and dreams until the new ones are here, but that’s not possible. Sometimes I wish it were because I don’t like the topsy-turvey feeling of not knowing, of not even seeing the next step, of feeling as though the world has been turned upside down.
 
But in this emptying out process, that Nature expresses so well in Autumn, allows the old to die so space is made for the new in Spring. And during the long Winter we are given time to linger in the emptiness so we may find what it is we truly want going forward. It’s important to honor the past and let it go. It serves us to hang out in this in-between time in order to let our soul’s desires to sift to the surface.

To let go is to know something else is coming. When we can finally let go, it’s because we trust ourselves, Nature, Spirit, the future. To let go is to trust Life.

If you’d like to delve into this liminal space of letting go and the dreaming that follows, sign up for Honor the Past, Dream the Future – A Seasons of the Goddess Workshop here.

On the Edge with a Green June Beetle

Outside my window, on the faux balcony a beetle weaved in and out of the wrought iron railing. And as beetles want to do, bumped into a bar and landed on its back. The screen was jammed, and I knew I couldn’t get to it to turn it over, but then I saw that it was nearing the edge as it rocked itself back and forth trying to turn back over. I watched it get closer and closer to the edge and then it fell.

Did it manage to open its wings before it hit ground?

And then it was buzzing around the balcony again. It came over to my window and bumped into it a couple of times before landing.

Was it hurt? It stayed a long time before it began to move towards the edge in its slow, rocking way. I can’t tell you what its plan is. Soon it crawls over the edge and stays there.

We all, at this moment, sit and wait at the edge. We bumble about our lives, running into obstacles, often of our own making. Sometimes we land on our back, unable to turn over. Sometimes we need a helping hand and sometimes we get lucky and are able to move just enough to tumble over the edge where in midair, we can find our wings and rise.

And after all that, we need to take time to rest and wait before we take off again. In those quiet moments, we can begin to understand where we’ve been and where we’re going. And when we’re ready we’ll take wing again, just like the Green June Beetle on my balcony.

The Seed - Drift and Purpose

Image by HeungSoon from Pixabay

A seed drifts by my second story window. Where will it land? Where will a new milkweed plant rise? And how many butterflies will be born from that one plant?

We can ask all these questions and still not have the answer, ever. Right now, as that seed floats on the breeze, anything is possible.

It feels as though we’re all seeds adrift, at the whim of the wind, waiting even as we’re moving through life. We feel the need to take action, but not all movement is equal and sometimes what feels like taking action is just busyness. And yet, in any movement we can learn, and grow and realize. And drifting can bring us to paths we wouldn’t have otherwise found.

Maybe drifting has its own purpose. The seed floats until it doesn’t. It may or may not take root where it lands. It may be drawn up into the air again and again. It may die before it lives.

And yet, if it does take root, if it does grow into a milkweed plant, if a butterfly lays its eggs on it and those eggs hatch and those caterpillars eat and grow and shed their caterpillarness and finally emerge as a butterfly. If all this, that butterfly will move with purpose and set in motion everything. It is driven to do what it does, to live and reproduce. And it gets carried by the breeze. It lets go.

And sometimes we let go. Life moves us and we move our lives. It’s all of a piece, so we can drift right now or we can make a plan and take action. Mostly we do both. This is how we cocreate. This is us becoming.