Tree Root poem....

 

Tree Root

I celebrate this perfect morning
lit like the inside of a pearl
with satin shell gleaming, container
of ocean-light here in the dripping mountain.
We've lost our centre, reliable weather,
predictable seasons, but the trees
anchor us deep, carrying our hearts,
their precious cargo, down with the roots
to the dark centre.
They show us the true ground of being,
the source of our living and prune away
the dross of our silly selves.
Re-formed and made new, glowing
with life we too can raise our faces
into the breeze, scenting out
the shifting path and welcoming
the winds of change, this sea-change
this earth becoming.

                                   © 02.15.2010     Gyllian Davies

After a day of feeling stuck in my own resistance, I remember this - I get to choose how I perceive what I'm up to. What a relief. Suddenly what had previously felt so difficult resolves, like murk settling in the water allowing it to become clear and lovely. The tasks that had loomed and glowered at me from the corner become effortless and even a pleasure to carry out. Magic!

Here is the gem I carry away from this day - in any one moment there is something to be grateful for. True kindness is me choosing to see the abundance. And when I do, I find the source of it is within me. It is my eyes and my heart that have chosen to see and recognize goodness, and to reflect that back to me. My own actions, gestures, thoughts - no matter how puny or insignificant they may seem - have the potential to be perceived as kindness and abundance. I get to bestow that kindness and abundance on me. And oh how my world lightens up when I do so!

We all have this capacity to gift to ourselves.  Perhaps the trick of it is to be willing to receive. To believe that joy and beauty belong in our lives.

In my "wiser" moments I understand that once again I have been gifted a chance to release more of my scarcity thinking and to step into believing this:

Always and always - there is enough! 

No-where in Creation is there a rule 

that says we must suffer,

so go ahead - choose Joy.

Here's a quote to fill you up! (from When God Was a Rabbit, by Sarah Winman)

'Do you believe in God, Arthur?' I said, eating the last piece of sponge.
       'Do I believe in an old man in the clouds with a white beard judging us mortals from one to ten? Good Lord no, my sweet Elly, I do not! I would have been cast out from this life years ago with my tatty history. Do I believe in a mystery; the unexplained phenomenon that is life itself? The greater something that illuminates inconsequence in our lives; that gives us something to strive for as well as the humility to brush ourselves down and start all over again? Then yes, I do. It is the source of art, of beauty, of love, and proffers the ultimate goodness to mankind. That to me is God. That to me is life. That is what I believe in.'
        I listened to the bell again, whispering across the waves, calling, calling. I licked my fingers and scrunched the tin foil up into a ball.
       'Do you think a rabbit could be God?' I ask casually.
       'There is absolutely no reason at all why a rabbit should not be God.'

Ellie is eleven, Arthur is a gay man, an older friend of the family, and of Ellie's - obviously! They are out in the boat; Ellie is teaching him to fish. When Ellie was six she outraged a clergy person at church by suggesting Jesus was an unplanned pregnancy. This fellow tells her that God cannot love anyone who questions His Divine Plan. (hah! - isn't that who God loves most?) Ellie carries this painful "truth"  - that God cannot love her - alone. Her brother gives her a rabbit....  the rest you'll have to find out by reading this amazing book!

How to begin the day

 Waking up I raise the blind, at first a little bit resigned  that  it's another day of low ceiling, no blue sky to be had.  But THEN I realize it's snowing, big fat fluffy flakes and I  am immediately cheered.

How beautiful the falling snow.  It fills me with gratitude for its beauty, with comfort for its quiet steadiness. with peace for the silence it brings.

Curious I step outside to check the thermometer. A few degrees above freezing, right where it's been stuck for these past several days. Down on the road I hear a city kind of sound - many tires moving through slush, only in slow motion. I can't see past the trees at the bottom of the meadow, but I suddenly understand what I'm hearing - a logging truck - all those tires are on one vehicle. And that vehicle is creeping down the road, a sign of how treacherous the driving must be.

We are at the mercy of the seasons. And why should it be any other way. Even when I first woke and saw simply grey sky, there was a part of me reaching for connection, reaching for a place of inhaling deep breaths of this grey day and feeling with a satisfied heart how good it is to be alive. The trick, of course,  is to let that part lead me into the day, cheerful and grateful.

It's what happens when we really look...

"....He awoke unfailingly at six every morning and wandered down to the jetty to note the constantly changing aspect of nature. He noticed small things, particular things; the additional markings of a young deer that shyly appeared over the other side of the river, the last star to disappear at sunrise, (it was always the faint one to the right of the large oak), the miniscule erosion of the opposite bank as a new root became visible amidst the mud and sand. He opened my eyes to this subtle scene of change, and whenever I declared I was bored, he would march me down to the water's edge and make me describe all I could see in tones of enthusiasm and wonder, until my body again reverberated with the excitement of life."

I have read this over and over again. It's from When God Was A Rabbit, by Sarah Winman. I read it and I am down there with them, gazing out over the water, watching the amazing subtlety of the world unfold. And when I go outside here where I live, I breathe in, and then breathe in again, and look, really look, around me. Oh the beauty. It's everywhere. Even on this day of horribly warm temperatures, melting snow, dripping eaves, and a fog-enclosed valley. Beauty. And I'm grateful to Sarah Winman for reminding me.