Extremities Touching

Walking back to the car yesterday a whisper turned my head to see a rock. Not that unusual but it looked like an egg or a little image of the earth as viewed from outer space. I picked it up and could feel the sun's warmth it had gathered inside spreading into my hand. Together we shared our warmth as I finished my walk. This morning as I sat in meditation I placed it against my heart and could feel my heart beat through its shape against my hand. The two images bound in my mind. Holding it in my hand yesterday my finger tips could feel warmth. Holding it against my heart my finger tips could feel my heart beat. To hold nature close, gently and with gratitude my extremities touch, feel, circulate and pulse. Is that not the way of nature? Solid, liquid, vapor and in-between all dance together as one calling for our embrace. And when I embrace the union of wholeness, balance, rhythm, ritual fill my Self and in turn the Universe. My touch of nature touches the extremities of all about me. As Life, people, thoughts, situations, and choices encounter me, may I have the grace of the rock to offer only warmth and the pulse of the heart to each extremity reaching out.  May the world I offer every thing be like the world of nature. Extremities touching and going inward.

Hospitable Welcome

It was almost 7 a.m., 31 degrees, light freezing mix falling. The sun's stretch hidden by the sudden appearance of winter. It was my time to walk. I had been pondering what I would do this winter, caught in the trap of mind fearing time. There is no time in Life, no tomorrow wrapped in fear. Life is timeless, fearless and offers faces and doors of discovery, dance, anticipation and gifts of surprise and wonder. I could "think" of all the reasons to postpone my walk or not even walk, or I could melt into Life, embrace, open the the door wide and say "Come in" and "Welcome." I opened the door and let Life stand between "in" and "hospitable" BEcoming "IN ~ Hospitality."

I opened the door. The clouds came and sat at the mountain's table. The sun touched the tips of autumn's trees making them look like hundreds of paint brushes dripping with the palette's paint upon the blank canvas of the sky... and I walked into and with Life.

I am the Child

For the grace to see fear as a child that begs a hand to hold hers,  I say thank you.

For the grace to see hopelessness as a child that begs an embrace, I say thank you.

For the grace to see uncertainty as a child awaiting an unlimited future yet to arrive, I say thank you.

For the grace to feel pain, and to know sweet Hands of Life, I am the child, I say thank you.

Texture of release

"Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life as a dog does his master's chase. Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality.  Be not simply good - be good for something.  All fables indeed have their morals, but the innocent enjoy  the story.

Let nothing come between you and the light.  Respect men as brothers only.  When you travel to the celestial city, carry no letter of introduction.  When you knock ask to see God - none of the servants. "
Henry David Thoreau


Annie 7/9/12 released in peace and love.

Layered plea

 I walked and begged the sweet Hands of Life to stop the forest fires, to quench the fire’s hunger and save the sweet earth.  Her sweet Hands changed my words and in my asking, asked back another question to me.  I heard my voice, my plea, whisper “quench the fire’s hunger not in punishment but in love.”  Nature is not arbitrary.  It is the nature of fire to burn.  To feel anger or worse towards the fire is to deny a part of nature herself. 

Please sweet Hands of Life, embrace the fire.  Quench the fire’s hunger not in punishment but in love.  Stop the scarring of the earth.  

Perhaps, in this prayer and meditation, teach me, to do likewise with the fires burning the sweet earth of my soul. And then to join you in Love's embrace.

Beauty's handmaiden

I remembered I needed to cut the weed hiding the electric meter. With shears in hand I went to prune. I discovered the weed bush, growing up between the foundation and cement driveway, was in fact, filled with buds and two blooming rose-like flowers. What I intended to cast off embraced me. I did not, do not know what it is. Knowledge sometimes is but the handmaiden of beauty. 

“You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through. ....

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.” 
― John O'Donohue