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Thursday Poem - From Below

I move among the ankles

of forest Elders, tread
their moist rugs of moss,
duff of their soft brown carpets.
Far above, their arms are held
open wide to each other, or waving
what they know, what
perplexities and wisdoms they exchange,
unknown to me as were the thoughts

of grownups when in infancy I wandered
into a roofed clearing amidst
human feet and legs and the massive

carved legs of the table,
the minds of people, the minds of trees
equally remote, my attention then

filled with sensations, my attention now
caught by leaf and bark at eye level
and by thoughts of my own, but sometimes
drawn to upgazing-up and up: to wonder
about what rises so far above me into the light.

Denise Levertov, From Below

Sundown in the Park

Over the long winter months, one waits for an evening like last evening to arrive, and there are so many times when the waiting seems interminable, when it seems as though springtime will never appear. Then comes a day when there is birdsong in the air, when the clouds are softer — the wind is quieter — the late sunlight seems warmer.

One can glimpse all of the Old Wild Mother's weaving on such a night as she stands there at the edge of that quiet pool among the trees, the slowly setting sun golden on her head and the ripples moving serenely outward.

Spring in the Air

Springtime, glorious springtime, the sun is shining, the skies are blue, the trees are in bud, and water is running freely everywhere in the village. When we took our early morning walk just after sunrise, there were pools, ponds, puddles and rivelets everywhere we looked, and Cassie and I were out and about much longer than we usually are.

This morning, the air is full of the music of returning geese, and a solitary heron flew overhead during our rambles, the first great blue bird of the season. Chickadees in the park are singing courting ballads, starlings are flying about with nesting materials in their bright yellow beaks, robins are foraging in the garden, and even the chipmunks are frisky.

We had all better enjoy these days, for in a day or two, there will be snow. . .

River Wild

At some unknown hour during the last few days, the unrelenting winter ice started to withdraw its hold on the little Mississippi river in the Lanark Highlands, and one could hear the roar of the river for miles as it went thundering through the good devices of the High Falls power station. Once through the dam and the turbines, the river plunged headlong through the gorge for a mile or two with raucous pleasure, cannonaded over the rocks and exploded through the narrow aperture under the bridge before encountering its beloved lake, making an impassioned tumultuous entrance a hundred metres out and merging blissfully into the quietly flowing waters.

The river and its cascading falls call out for a closer experience of their wildness, but one cannot approach too closely in springtime, and the area is far too treacherous underfoot to be negotiated. There is a great haphazard tumble of wet granite boulders below and monumental jagged shards of ice which have been heaved forth by the river in its frantic efforts to shake itself loose from winter — there have been many occasions in springtimes past when I have found myself right in the river as I tried to wander closer to all that splendid wetness.

Yesterday, I was a little wiser for those earlier wet adventures, although I was certainly not much drier — I found a wide flat rock near a quiet melt pool and just sat there for a long time, merging myself (whoever that thoughtless eccentric creature happens to be) into the day and my own restlessly tumbling thoughts with the spray and the roar. There was no sense of time there, no noise and turbulence, no me at all.

In autumn, the view from the top is just out of this world.

Sunday (Haiga)

Wild Geese Returning

Oh Spirit, oh Great Mystery, oh turning seasons, oh Wild Mother, oh feathered perfection. . . .

Hallelujah, the geese are returning, and I saw my first greater Canada by the lake yesterday. Then, as I stood by the kitchen window last evening with a mug of tea, something moved me to wrap up warmly and go outside into the garden for a while and stand under the trees and the clear deep indigo skies with their forest of twinkling stars. Something said firmly and in a voice which had to be obeyed, "just go, and go now, you old fool. . . .".

It may have been a faint hearing, a vague premonition, or just one of those clear and plangent imperatives which occasionally make themselves known at the cusp of the seasons. The evening was cold, but I obeyed the sovereign tug and went out to stand shivering in the darkness for an hour or two, and as I stood there, throngs of greater Canadas were flying right over my head and across the waxing crescent moon, singing their hearts out in wild exuberance as they flew and so glad to be home.

How does one describe one's feelings at such a time? There was a wild cavorting happiness inside which simply cannot be described here, or at least described well - I so wish I could.

Mama Says Om - Light

Sunrise and the morning light moving like honey across the ash trees in the garden behind the little blue house in the village, the sun going down in flames over the western shore of Dalhousie Lake late in summer, the last rosy fingers of the setting sun as they lingered on the rocks and trees along the shoreline.

It has been years since I sat on a rock and watched the sun go down on the north shore of Lake Superior, but I remember each and every one of those childhood (even toddler) sunsets as though they happened yesterday, and I revisit them all the time, still completely dazzled and entranced by the astonishing Algoma sunsets after all these years. A bone deep craving remains, and I would pack up and return in a heartbeat, but most definitely not in winter. Watching the moon come up on those wild northern shores was an equally incandescent experience.

Oh, the colours, the movement, the warmth, the sheer flaming magnificence of those performances at dusk. Every night, the sun painted a shimmering trail across the water from itself to me and invited me to visit, every night, the icy cold (even in midsummer) ripples moved in a circle (or spiral) dance around the old rocks, and every single wave meeting the shore was shot with gold.

We are light ourselves, forged from the dust of the stars, and I often think that something within us still longs for the light from which we came, to know our origins somewhere out there in the vast and ancient starry deeps. Our craving for for light and incandescence goes way beyond words and images.

Written for the incandescent mamas at Mama Says Om.

Thursday Poem - Return

Through the weeks of deep snow
we walked above the ground
on fallen sky, as though we did
not come of root and leaf, as though
we had only air and weather
for our difficult home
But now
as March warms, and the rivulets
run like birdsong on the slopes,
and the branches of light sing in the hills,
slowly we return to earth.

Wendell Berry

The red oak tree at the foot of the garden behind the little blue house in the village keeps its leaves all winter long, and in the depths of the long white season, it brings me great pleasure and much opportunity for thought.

There is a weekly haiku offering here.

Reflections

"Puddle", I say to myself, "puddle, rivulet, river, creek, brook, stream, lake, canal, tributary, delta, rill, runnel, watercourse, tide, rundle, channel, passage, lagoon, current, torrent, estuary, firth, strait, reservoir, tide, torrent, wave, Niagara, cataclysm, cataract, deluge, ocean, outpouring, tide, torrent, ripple, wave, waterfall, old sea".

The voice is not strident — it is soft, plangent and tentative, but the first few words are as taut as a whole warehouse full of piano wire. There's a looming iceberg of distress here, most of it hidden just below the surface and waiting to hurl itself out and into the air. Is that me speaking?

Greyness at the cusp of the seasons, ongoing health "stuff" and an unexpected visitation from Lady Influenza - the three formed an unhallowed trinity which has been doing an excellent job of thumping this old hen for the last several days and filling her with doubts too numerous to mention. All (or most) of the usual things have gotten done somehow, but I've been on automatic pilot much of the time, and my heart has not been "in it" (whatever the vast amorphous cosmic "it" happens to be).

For the last few weeks, wordlessness has been ambushing me at the darndest times and in the darndest places. I sit looking at a blank blog screen here for several minutes first thing in the morning before tapping anything in at all. I owe many of you thoughtful messages, but the right words have been evading me, and when I try to write something, the words just don't come. I'm sorry. . . .

My swirling thoughts are turbulent, stormy and scattered — they are baffled and despondent, and I have often been frustrated, curt and impatient with myself. When something does make it onto the screen and thence out onto the web, it looks and sounds like a croaking discordant cacophony utterly bereft of melody and tunefulness — never a symphony, a ballad or even a few lyrical bars of Scarlatti.

At times like these, the inner predator or naysayer is hard at work and stitching her sordid scraps into a veritable blanket of gloom. The old strumpet rubs her hands together in glee and cackles away in her thin voice — she points a bony finger at me in accusation and enunciates a long list of failures, errors, omissions and shortcomings, a whole lifetime of them in fact. She lurks in every shadow and tries to impose her countenance in places where she doesn't belong: morning clouds and spruce trees, the steam emerging from the throat of my tea kettle, a darkened window where only the moon's perfect face should appear.

The cure for these monsoons is something I call my "water meditation" (or litany), a long slow thoughtful recitation of names for waters wild and untamed, all the ones I can think of. If I can just remember to do the meditation at the right time, my thoughts are full of clear streams, tumbling water and liquid music when I finish, and that nasty shrill strident old woman has laced up her boots and stomped off somewhere else in a huff. After she goes, there is perfect blessed stillness for a moment or two, and then another voice speaks in a wise and loving benediction. "Stillness, my daughter," it says, "balance, reflection, flowing. . ."

Sunday and No Words (Haiga)

Mama Says Om - Joyous Delight

Fair trade coffee to start the day and pots of tea in the evening, journaling, calligraphy, painting and photography, watching the sun come up every morning through the windows looking onto the garden behind the little blue house in the village, pan pipes, books, books, books, little yellow beeswax candles redolent of honey as they burn, firelight, woodsmoke and Shoyeido's plum blossom incense, fragrant purple hyacinths and daffodils, old mermaid sanctuaries and mermaid sisters, the magnificent colours the Old Wild Mother paints over everything

Brightly coloured summer sunsets, snow falling like confetti on the garden, the perfect trees on my hill in Lanark, leaves and stones, Canada geese returning in March, the wild orchids of hillside, bog and fen, Great Blue Herons on the lake, grosbeaks, warblers and owls, the beaver pond now as it thaws, loons singing on the river, those incredible winter days so still that one can hear the snow falling in the trees, the turning of the seasons, this journey. . . .

Only seven??? There is absolutely no way — it's a world full of wonders, there is joyous delight in all sorts of places, and one has only to become still and attentive for a while to partake of it. Light, love, laughter, friendship (and old mermaidship), a bone deep connection with life and this perfect little blue planet are the greatest delights of all.


Written for the delightful mamas at MamaSaysOm.

For Tomorrow - Beannacht ("Blessing")

I can think of no finer blessing for St. Patrick's Day than the perfectly singing words of John O'Donohue, and so I hold them out to you on this morning before the "wearing of the green". Happy, happy St. Patrick's Day to each and every one of you, Irish or not.

On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you.

And when your eyes freeze behind the grey window and the ghost of loss gets into you, may a flock of colours, indigo, red, green, and azure blue come to awaken in you a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays in the currach of your thought and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you, may there come across the waters a path of yellow moonlight to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of Earth be yours, may the clarity of the light be yours, may the fluency of the ocean be yours, may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow wind work these words of love around you, an invisible cloak to mind your life.

John O'Donohue (Anam Cara), Echoes of Memory

Thursday Poem - Rainy Morning

Grey morning, and the mourning doves are lined up
like so many small chimneys along the roofline,
rain, rain and rain again, more rain still to come.

Out in the roadway bright umbrellas are blooming
like wild and dewy orchids in the hands of children
going to school and chattering among themselves.

On the old oak table here, my journals, envelopes
and fountain pen patiently wait this morning's calling
by the muse, alas the lady does not come.

Written for the blithe spirits at Poetry Thursday.

One of Those Days

To be more precise, it is one of those March days when the skies are grey, the rainfall is dense (anything but intermittent however), and my internet access lurches and wobbles and is all over the place, wracked with indecision and unable to make up its mind whether it should grant me a scrap or two of blogging this morning or just sit there making rude noises and shaking its head ruefully.

However Wednesday develops, there were blue skies in Lanark a day or two ago, and one of the places where I found myself standing entranced and staring up in astonishment was here on the slope below the great white pine which commands the western hill.

Tree is magnificent, and I could stand in deep snow looking at her forever.

By the Fence on the Hill

Sunday in the Field

Is it the songs of the owls, or the sound of the wind in the trees? Is it my hapless floundering through deep snow to take few photos, stopping every few metres to marvel at something: the shapes of milkweed pods spilling their silk into the wind in anticipation of springtime, the shape of an icicle hanging in solitary splendour, a single oak leaf drifting into the trail at my feet?

It is cold and snowy here, but there are intervals when the skies are so brilliantly blue that my old eyes are dazzled, when I feel as rooted as an ancient oak in the earth and snow under my wandering feet, when green sap flows in my veins rather than just blood, and the wild places leave me so entranced and breathless that I am beyond words and descriptions. In the presence of such grandeur, how insignificant are my small human worries, health concerns and mundane issues.

Something inside is awakening. Something is stirring, and there is a restless quality to these days too — a strong clear sense that a great mystery and many fine adventures are just over the next hill and within an easy lope through the snow.

I wander, I look around, and I wonder endlessly — sometimes I just stand out in the woods for hours, wide eyed, open mouthed and staring, astonished by the sheer magnificence all around me. I take photos and make notes in my little notebook, then return home and try to capture it all here in a net of words and images, and I know beyond certainty that I shall never in a million years be able to describe any of it adequately in words or photos, not a single bit of it.

The best I can hope for is an echo now and again of milkweed pod, leaf or tree, and that will have to do, but how I wish I could do a little better. It is all too beautiful for mere words, and I simply cannot describe how passionately I love this beautiful earth.

Waiting for Alchemy

The March woods are quiet places for the most part, the occasional hooting of owls, the drumming of woodpeckers off among the trees. There are long intense blue tree-shaped shadows falling across the trails and bisecting nearby areas of sparkling snow as we ramble through the deep snow. Those shadows are shortening and widening even as we watch, and they seem to be doing a kind of wild euphoric dance - there is a pas de deux in progress with the trees above taking on the roles of partner in this sylvan choreography.

Here and there are old cedar cabins like the one above, artifacts of an earlier time when maple sap was laboriously gathered by hand in galvanized tin pails, driven home through the snow by teams of placid draught horses and then boiled up into maple syrup and sugar in great cauldrons. There are still a number of those heavy old cast iron cauldrons lying about in the woods, and I am always searching for one of my own to take home to the Two Hundred Acre Wood.

This year, the sap lines are all in place and ready to go, fuel tanks are full, firewood is piled high for the syrup evaporators, and there is a kind of hush over everything as we wait for the great maples to begin gifting us with their fragrant sap and the maple syrup run to begin. I am dreaming of sugar birds (Saw Whet owls) singing in the woods, of waffles, crepes, pancakes and amber sweetness poured lovingly over plates piled high with such things. In the general stores of the highlands, the talk is about weather, and the air is one of great anticipation. "Soon, soon, soon," sing the Saw Whet neighbours. "Be patient, my friends, it won't be long now. . . ."

Early March From the Bridge

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.
Winnie the Pooh

Thursday Poem - Daily

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips

These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares

These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl

This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out

This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky

This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it

The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

Naomi Shihab Nye, Daily
(from The Words Under the Words)

There is an original haiku sequence (earth) for this week here.

Small Wish & Wise Thought

One of these fine days, there is going to be a shop at Cafe Press, and as I consider the available options, items, fabrics and colours, they are all dancing through my thoughts like so many windblown oak leaves on a cold blustery day.

The image above is pinned to the bulletin board here in the study. Although it has already found its way onto T-shirts, notecards, mousepads and mugs through a local manufacturer, it will probably be one of the first things to be added to the new menu at Cafe Press. The graphic (Joy in Japanese) and accompanying words have taken me (and friends who asked for the aforesaid shirts, notecards, mouse pads and mugs) through some very tight corners and abysmal potholes in the past year or three.

This is one of my personal mantras, something we all need to remember from time to time — and something we are always forgetting — that joy is our birthright and it is all around us.

Blow Blow

The temperature started to plummet here in late afternoon yesterday, and by nightfall it was bitterly cold. The village was in the icy grip of a wind which didn't merely moan and groan — that wind howled and shrieked and screamed and cursed, beating on our doors, rattling the windows and walls of the little blue house and attempting to wrench the eaves off altogether. The cacophanous night wind demanded entrance everywhere at once, and we tuned out its shrill request, drawing the draperies closed against the darkness, heaping birch logs in the fireplace and staying close to the lighted hearth with our books and mugs of tea.

When I went outside into the garden briefly to look at the hazy waning moon very late in the evening, both sets of windbells were in motion and dancing to and fro so vigorously that at times they were almost horizontal in their ceaseless oscillation. The little blue house sighed and creaked all night long, and there were times when its posts and beams were more vocal than the windbells in the garden.

This morning, there is brilliant sunlight, but it is crackling cold, and the themometer is registering a balmy minus forty with the wind chill factored into the equation. One would think that surely this is unusual weather for northern March, but (alas) that is not so — days like this one are rather common here at this time of year. Every March lion in existence is on the prowl this morning and roaring loudly enough to awaken those who have travelled beyond the fields we know.

Spending the day indoors and bearing witness to the sunlight and the wind from this side of the window glass seems like a very good idea. Tea anyone???

Journey By Owl Light

The day was tenebrous, still and grey, and the bird feeders on the Two Hundred Acre Wood were all empty. The deep soft snow was well over my knees, and it muffled the sounds engendered by a laborious journey into the woods on snowshoes, dragging a toboggan chock full of grain, apples, suet and sunflower seed.

Now and again, one is granted a spontaneous and serendipity gift in the woods, and I have learned — the hard way of course — not to seek such gifts actively, but to cultivate a slow patience, to wait and see what the day holds in store — there is always a little something on offer on these potterings if one is thoughtful, patient and observant. Wild gifts are often so small and subdued that they are almost insignificant in the general scheme of things: an artfully curved branch bending under the weight of snow or icicles, a single delicate faded winter leaf caught in a tree somewhere, windblown milkweed pods, variegated lichens blanketing the rocks which poke their crowns out of the deep drifts of white here and there.

In the words of Ursula Kroeber leGuin, I am a slow unlearner, but how I love my unteachers in this quiet northern life.

Yesterday's surprise gift was a tiny Saw Whet Owl who perched in the crook of a tree along the snow drowned trail and watched with great golden eyes as I tugged my burden (a much needed bounty for the deer and birds however) by slow inches into the woods. This is the time of "the sugar bird" as this fierce wee predator is known in the Lanark Highlands — his springtime courting songs are heard just as the maple syrup season is beginning, and his presence is a sure sign that springtime is on its way, even though other markers of the changing season have yet to make an appearance in the woods and fields.

Withered Leaves - Sunday Morning

Grey, grey and more grey. . . . Land and sky and trees are grey in March, shades ranging from a light shimmering silver to smoke, bleached grey-rose and murky taupe. On my rambles, eyes, camera and telephoto lens are constantly scanning horizons, rivers and hedgerows for the tiniest scrap of colour - any colour at all which is not grey.

Who would have thought that there would be so many synonyms for a word which is the very essence of modesty, restraint and slowly wandering understatement?

ashen, blah, bleak, bleary, blurred, boring, caliginous, characterless, cheerless, cloudy, cinereal, colorless, dappled, dark, dim, desolate, dingy, drab, dreary, dismal, dry, dull, dusky, dusty, faded, faint, filmy, flat, foggy, fuzzy, gloomy, grizzled, grungy, heather, hoary, indistinct, insipid, iron, lackluster, leaden, lightless, lowering, lusterless, mat, misty, monotoned, monotonous, mousy, muddy, murky, muted, nebulous, neutral, obscure, opaque, oppressive, overcast, oyster, pale, pearly, poorly lit, rundown, same, sere, shabby, shaded, shadowy, silvered, silvery, slate, smoggy, smoky, somber, stone, sullied, tarnished, tenebrous, turbid, unchanging, unclear, unilluminated, uninspired, vague, vapid, vaporous, weak

March's Moon of Awakening

After a long dark winter, one pines for warmth and light and likes to think of the third moon interval as earth's awakening time - many (if not most) of the names of March's full moon hint at awakening, springtime and greening.

This year, there is little evidence of awakening in the landscape. Beyond my window this morning lies a vast ocean of deep soft new snow which billows and curls and rolls away into the distance: the cars, small trees, hedgerows and fences of the village poking out of the breakers like storm tossed toy boats and channel markers.

I knew there was a moon up there in the inky darkness last night, and just where it was rising beyond the ash trees, but one could see nothing of "She Who Rules the Night", and the same will probably hold true this evening. I shall not be standing out in the garden with tripod and camera, wrapped up in every warm garment I possess, looking up and shivering from head to foot - Lady Moon will not be visible on this most radiant night of the lunar month.

One can do very well without these March storms, but the fresh snow outside is exactly the colour of the moon which has been spangling the late winter skies in my dreams all week long, and the Vernal Equinox is only few weeks away. I shall place a pot of daffodils, crocus or fragrant purple hyacinth (my favourite) on the old oak table in the dining room this evening, make tea, light a candle and think of warm and happy things. After so many years of life and moon watching on the earthly plane this time around, the moon is an old friend, and her image is clear and radiant in my thoughts, whether the night is cloudy, or clear and full of stars.

We also know March's moon as:

Alder Moon, Big Famine Moon, Big Winds Moon, Blossoming Out Moon, Bud Moon, Buffalo Dropping Their Calves Moon, Catching Fish Moon, Chaste Moon, Cherry Blossom Moon, Cold’s End Moon, Crow Moon, Daffodil Moon, Death Moon, Deer Moon, Eagle Moon, Earth Awakens Moon, Equinox Moon, Flower Shower Moon, Geese Return Moon, Greening Moon, Growth Begins Moon, Hertha's Moon, Hyacinth Moon, Kono Moon, Lenten Moon, Little Frog Moon, Little Spring Moon, Maple Moon, Maple Sugar Moon, Middle Finger Moon, Moon of Opening Hands, Moon of the Crane, Moon of Snowblindness, Moon of the Vernal Equinox, Moon of Whispering Winds, Moon When Buffalo Cows Drop Their Calves, Moon When the Leaves Burst Forth, Moon When the Geese Return, Moose Hunter Moon, Much Lateness Moon, Oestara's Moon, Ogroni Moon, Pexsisen Moon, Plow Moon, Princess Flower Moon, Purple Glory Tree Moon, Rebirth Moon, Renewal Moon, Sap Moon, Seed Moon, Sleeping Moon, Snow Blind Moon, Snow Crust Moon, Snowshoe Breaking Moon, Sore Eyes Moon, Spring Moon, Storm Moon, Sucker Fishing Moon, Sugar Making Moon, Third Moon, Tibouchina Moon, Trail Sit Along Moon, Tree Peony Moon, Violet Moon, Water Stands in the Ponds, Moon, Wind Strong Moon, Windy Moon, Worm Moon

Mama Says Om - Static

It's about balance and change in my book, and not about staleness, sluggishness, paralysis or inertia.

The word static comes from a Latin word staticus, thence from the Greek statikos meaning weight and statos meaning standing, and nowhere is there any reference to change or the lack thereof. In mundane conversation, static is something else entirely, and we use the word pejoratively as a synonym for frozen, unchanging, constant, deadlocked, fixed or stationary. Indeed, static shares common roots with stagnant, a word with connotations which are usually anything but favourable.

Use the word static as we may, for students of science, particularly electrostatics, static does not necessarily mean fixed or unchanging. When such scientists say that things are static or existing in stasis, they often mean that the objects being studied are in a state of balance, one in which equal and opposing forces cancel each other out, resulting in a state of perfect equilibrium. This is a bad thing???

Some of nature's best entertainment is created by cosmic imbalances, like the aurora borealis (or northern lights or merry dancers) generated in an unequal contention between the solar winds of old Helios and the earth's magnetic field. The beastie commonly called static electricity (which makes one's hair stand on end on those wild summer nights when the sky is painted with lightening) arises from another imbalance, that between positive and negative electrical charges up there in the blue.

Evolutionary biologists use the word static to describe an interval in which there is little or no noticeable development in a given species or ecosystem over time - a situation in which evolutionary lineages (e.g. the prehistoric coelacanth, horseshoe crabs, tortoises and great monitor lizards like the Komodo dragon) continue to exist and even thrive for eons without any discernible physical change or adaptation. Might that not just mean that the Old Wild Mother got it right the first time around?

Are we caught in a web of "stuckness" which holds us in mucilaginous thrall, or do we exist in transformative motion and flowing ever onward? On viewing the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux in the 1940's, Pablo Picasso exclaimed that humanity had not learned a thing in twelve thousand years (he was about five thousand years short in his estimation), but I don't think he was saying that we are all static, stuck and unchanging. He was simply thunderstruck by the visionary magnificence he had witnessed that day, and by the indisputable evidence that we have been on a journey together for a very long time.

Watching the seasons turn in the highlands, I know right down to my blood and bones and marrow that we are anything but static, and the same goes for the natural order of which we are a miniscule element. We are works in progress, all moving in a great circle or spiral. When we cultivate stillness (apparent stasis) in our pursuit of wisdom, growth, connection and creativity, the great work continues, and what we are seeking may be stasis in the true sense of the word - sacred balance. We may look as though we are not doing anything when we are curled up in meditation, painting or writing haiku, watching our children and grandchildren sleep or lost in the rapt contemplation of a tree, but we are never more fluid and evolving than at such times, and they are to be cherished.

Written (very badly) for the electrifying mamas at Mama Says Om.

Thursday Poem - Unconditional

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I gain the embrace of the universe;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.
Each condition I flee from pursues me,
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-like essence.
I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game.
To play it is purest delight;
To honor its form--true devotion.

Jennifer Welwood, Unconditional

(good things to remember. . .)