October emergence

During the spiraling months of summer, smoke-skied and full of prophetic lament, I went inward and sheltered. I listened to the trees and made acquaintance of the doe and her fawns, took Whitman’s advice and shed my internal wars*. October isn’t the usual month to emerge from a cocoon, but as the leaves turn and the days fold in, I dare to hope the jaded, heavy weariness I was carrying in summer has transformed into wings, a tongue to suck the nectar out of the rest of my life.

Joy is what I want. Joy despite all the facts.

I’ve turned to the land in these days, laying my ear to the ground to listen to her speak. There is healing here. “It’s your native spirituality,” my husband tells me when I try to explain what the plants and creatures mean to me, how my soul resonates with this place in a way that no theology ever has. It took four decades to arrive at this kind of soul freedom; I grieve over the wasted time, but I’m also filled with gratitude that I have emerged here now.

I’m still finding words hard to come by. I wait for stories to stir again, as they will eventually. I keep the hearth swept and the fire ready to light when they are ready.

For now, the poetry of Judyth Hill to breathe some hope your way:

Wage Peace

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:

Have a cup of tea …and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.

Celebrate today.

I hope you are holding on during this crazy year, finding your own freedoms and threads of peace. Stay hopeful and strong, friends.

Peace keep you,

Tonia

*”A culture that requires harm to one’s soul in order to follow the culture’s proscriptions is a very sick culture indeed. This “culture” can be the one a woman lives in , but more damning yet, it can be the one she carries around and complies with within her own mind.” Clarissa Pinkola Estes