Month: February 2021

Just here… practicing being human and dancing with what it feels like to be a multidimensional being in a body, like all of us, a force of nature wrapped in stories and sinew and stardust. The dance shimmies us into spaces yearning be explored, touched, held, and loved. Sometimes I go willingly and other times my wise animal body would rather curl up and wait for the storm to pass.

There is no judgement when I just witness the weathered pathways my nervous system is familiar with. Spiraling softly into crevices where it seems nothing could flourish, I notice what happens when courage unfurls its wings, where compassion brews its nourishing broth, where I become the one who soothes the uprising in my tissues, with the help of other bodies, whether tree or sea or human, opening channels of receptivity and release so the impulse to hide or explode gives way to open arms and curiosity.

From the quiet dark, burgeoning miracles. From the pulsing underground, eruptions of light. Ever present reminders of disintegration ride alongside the undulating forces of imagination and sensation. Beholding beauty is a full time occupation.
A body might slowly, gently open an invitation for contraction to dance its way to the light, to be warmed, or grounded, to be seen more clearly and touched more kindly, where it can give itself new names, like grief, or shame, or fear, or uncontainable excitement, all dissolving like salt in the waves when we let it come & go without fighting what is here.

Maybe softening can feel more safe than it has before; maybe today, the body does not feel it can go there. It’s ok. Root in and just be witness to yourself. Our animal body is as wise as our spirit. It does not work to banish any protective response, to make it unwelcome; aliveness is a devotion to a practice of sensing, noticing, and being with. This is a practice of self trust, as our own guide, feeling held by all who are here now, all who have come before, and all who will be. The luminous field welcomes all of us home.

“The light returns, the light goes.” Little by little. As the heart spills over its edges to touch its own vastness, we find ourselves as the unchanging spark amidst all rising and crashing.

The heart can hold all of you, me, us. Call yourself, ourselves, beloved. May we let ourselves receive inside our deepest folds, and give from the depths we are able to offer from, allowing our capacity to shift and change shape. As the light returns, may our own clear-seeing reveal to us what we need to see or be seen by in this moment. May our own clear-sensing reveal to us all we need to feel or be felt by in this moment.

“May you be at peace. May your heart remain open. May you awaken to the light of your own true nature. May you be healed, may you be a source of healing to all beings.” Tibetan Buddhist Prayer

In my dreams I am dancing with my fear, yes her, tight gripped sweet lipped protector, guardian and gateway to secret songs and the passage underground, or to the stars, depending on which road you meet her. I ask her questions and I question her answers. I watch the strange ways she moves, a few too many steps ahead, big-eyed deer disappearing between shadows, reappearing as bone-white light with a rabbit cloaked heart, racing, and wet new skin, a cold armor of certainty under which I see the softness she hides like treasure. She knows what is worth keeping safe until its ripening. The surface breaks on time, you can’t rush tidal creatures.

She changes shape as soon as I think I understand her, so what can I do but love her ingenuity. I send her twirling and watch the ribbons unravel from around her throat, stones in her stomach dissolving like salt in a lake, too fast to hold form. I love her until she loves me back, telling her, “forgive me for taking so long, someone told me once to ignore you, and I listened, but I never could.” She reminds me of everything I have been and done despite it all. I remember, and we laugh until nothing is left, but me and the glow and the path becoming clearer, even if just in glimmers and sensations. The brambles that tear at my skin are just doing what they do. I’m learning to love them too.

I am here for thousands of tiny miracles clearing the path in a minefield of chaos. For being able to choose where and how I walk, or dance, or pause through it. For the practice of being human. For space to remember my divinity. For outstretched arms of understanding. For the capacity to receive the blessings of birdsong, blossoms, and tiny sprouts that burst through soil towards the sun, as much as I receive the letting go of leaves, the crumbling rot, and the decay. For nourishment in all realms. For courage and fear walking hand in hand. For golden waves of peace that permeate the cells and expand into every crack.

For this moment being enough. For truth shining through layers of distortions. For trust restored after betrayal, inner and outer. For the creative impulse of aliveness that carries me through each moment. For knowing my life as my work and my art, and my gifts as the light creating shapes & meaning from the shadows. For finding wholeness after self abandonment. For knowing God through human kindness. For knowing God through beauty, heartbreak, and the potential to repair the fractures. For a vast heartscape that can hold it all, and remains a sanctuary of identity that shifts, an ocean of disintegration and imagination. For the physiology of the sacred, and the biology of a blessing.

For unwinding, unlearning, and surrendering into the richness of unknowing. For loosening my grip. For old things becoming new again. For new things that recall their ancient nature. For hidden messages coming through at the perfect time. For the ability to see, feel, and translate the soul’s language. For a sound, or a scent, or a feeling that helps me remember. For a color that washes over me and strengthens me. For the way the light enters the windows in the morning, kisses from behind and the joy of dreaming the paths we desire. For the wind that sings its song through the trees. For the warmth that swirls and rises in my belly, returning all of me to me, present here for us. For the chance to be a spirit in the shape of person in a broken world that still holds so much magic. Thank you for being here with me.