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

21 December 2008

"Show yourself and I will swim to you."

Yule. A bright sky and i feel the turning wheel beneath my eager feet eager to see what winter lays for banquet. the wind lifts small snow like a billowing sheet snapped to drift down on the ribbon im walking and i smile at the earth, seeds and sweet green grass sleeping beneath a deep broad mattress of snow. the sky is wide and chinese blue, huge happy clouds and i hear a hawk, crows, the wind through the valley. each houses hearth breathes its own scent of smoke. my hearth to me smells sweetest and returning home i am happy to smell the warm hello. blessing upon blessing i strip sweating into a warm shower and am reborn. but the phone rings and its mad adrenaline i lose myself but as i rarely do stand my ground and am willing to give as long as i also get and something in him hears me and its okay.
i realize i can set out sunflower seeds and suet for the birds beyond the kitchen window and not suffer strangling millet grass in my bathtub flowerbed. it will be a hard winter for the feathered friends of the Faeries and i would be fain not to do my part. theres a sweet detente. i make cookies and wash the sheets. i putter and pride myself that im not picking at the glorious stress blemish blooming just in time for christmas. he notices i dread christmas but love new years. and i realize that somehow i dont see the reason for christmas for me. jesus borrowed some good ideas but left us in the same pickle he found us in and caused a lot of bloodshed and heartache post mortem. the return of the sun is a welcome cause for celebration and i light a candle and say a prayer and walk out into the world to welcome the turning of the wheel. but christmas has no purpose for me. not my god. for me this week, the Sun is born. i revel with the birds and the beasts. i laugh at the mud and turn my face to wind and space and light.
im counting nickels to bring molasses home for gingerbread and we watch a movie and it feels so good to be together in all our strangeness and i will resolve to weave a warmer sanctuary for not only my own strangeness but that of others. tonight the temperature halves and the wind is a fierce beast roaring around the house and i look forward to laying in the warm bed in the sleeping breath of my family, listening.

The first day of my 365 days of grace:

1. Strength to walk at a fine clip and breathe cold clean air into my body.
2. My meds.
3. The growing light and how it simply makes me feel better.
4. Little birds.
5. I got my molasses.
6. #4 tells me he loves me when i need to hear it most.
7. My warm little home.
8. My hope.
9. I know how to knit socks.
"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)