“Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances.”

01 October 2008


Bright Idea #81: Think Good Thoughts.
"A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity." Grey flannel clouds and random drizzle. To town for provisions, settling accounts and egg money. baked beautiful golden butter cake for the boys. Stretching always makes me feel as if theres more space between my vertebrae as if the energy flows through me more clearly and cleanly. i spend time in my body then, listening. last night was rough, restless and not breathing, the morning dreams hectic with displacement and negotiation. there was barley and sweet cherries for breakfast and buckwheat and curry for lunch. theyre growing up and have their lives a little farther from me now and im proud of them. i take time to watch the leaves fall from the trees in the wind it was like november today damp and desolate we make our plans for samhain and a trip to feed the little birds that eat from your hand, their impossibly delicate claws scratchy-kissing giving fingers. that is the power of chickadee for me. that trust and communion, beauty and nourishment intertwined. this weekend ill start the fingerless gloves ive been thinking so much about, get back into the knitting groove, the lovely calm of soft industry. i realized today that i walk around with a slightly surprised expression and its carving creases in my forehead. my reflection this morning in the doorway tells me im getting older, my cells are losing their juice to wine of time. hard cider and a spirit made from elderflowers. bread i prayed with my own hands. sweet cake and clean water to wash the worries away. gratitude for easy breathing. looking forward. J. as messenger of housewarming, creekstones and i am not afraid.
"And if the question were asked: What is more real, the mundane or the sublime? most would hesitate before they gave an answer. On the one side, details: say, the aftermath of a breakfast, dirty chipped plates in the sink, their rims encrusted with egg yolk. Against this, the unnameable: small aching heart with boasts, what can you know? Outside the cage of everything we ever heard or saw, beyond, outside, above, there lies the real, hiding as long as we shall live, there stretch and trail the millions of names of God burning across the eons. When all through this our end will come before we even know the names of us.

For many the egg yolk prevails." -L.M.

"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well." -V.V.G.

"The perfection of the Absolute where all Becoming stops and pure Being, immutable, timeless, unchanging, hangs forever like a ripe peach upon the bough." -E.A.

"...and the whole incident was incredibly frazzling and angst-rod and filled almost a whole mead notebook and is here recounted in only its barest psycho-skeletal outline." -D.F.W.

"At the top of the mountain, we are all snow leopards." -H.S.T.

"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live." -D.T.
"Cometh a voice: My children, hear; From the crowded street and the close-packed mart I call you back with my message clear, back to my lap and my loving heart. Long have ye left me, journeying on by range and river and grassy plain, to the teeming towns where the rest have gone - come back, come back to my arms again. So shall ye lose the foolish needs that gnaw your souls; and my touch shall serve to heal the fretted nerve. Treading the turf that ye once loved well, instead of the stones of the city's street, ye shall hear nor din nor drunken yell, but the wind that croons in the ripening wheat. I that am old have seen long since ruin of palaces made with hands for the soldier-king and the priest and prince whose cities crumble in desert sands. But still the furrow in many a clime yields softly under the ploughman's feet; still there is seeding and harvest time, and the wind still croons in the ripening wheat. The works of man are but little worth; for a time they stand, for a space endure; but turn once more to your mother - Earth, my gifts are gracious, my works are sure. Instead of the strife and pain I give you peace, with its blessing sweet. Come back, come back to my arms again, for the wind still croons in the ripening wheat."
-John Sandes, The Earth-Mother (excerpt, 1918)