If you walk a labyrinth deep in the woods, the wind tossing the treetops around with their creaking and squeaking, them dancing and giggling, you can’t lock your eyes on the path.  Though circular, it is dependable.  You can’t get lost.  If you step over a line, you’ll either go back to the entrance or be secure in the center.

Keeping my eyes up to the laughing swirling goddess party around me, their pine cone jewelry falling off, gems of new worlds ready to tumble and root as the Ladies bend and reach, twist and turn.

But every day I must listen to Her voice and face the direction of Her bidding–Her words to type, Her voice to capture, Her Way to discover, even when the path seems to end.  I keep walking the road, the path, over the hill, through the bush and go back to check the map again and again if I must.  Every step of the Way is wondrous, even if it seems so familiar and sometimes redundant. 

I throw myself on the path of heaven.  The way is the destination, the walk is the gift, and with each step I indulge that She has Her Way with me.

Today we’re looking at bulbs to plant this fall, trusting on the flowers in the spring to rise out of the little balls of smooth skin potential.  Yesterday we rested, feet up, view brilliantly open as we indulged in a spectacular manifestation of beauty & prayer.  Is everything either a bulb or a flower, seed or fruit?  And what of that excrutiating time in between when the seed pushes and grows, adds on cell by cell in a direction rumored to be the sun beyond the boulders of miniscule sand that is packed around it?

Here we are humans, planted deep into Gaia, our bodies the earth, the rivers and the sun captured small star in our chest.  We stretch, we grow by physical and spiritual cell by day by minute by ache by laugh.

The cedars and firs have anointed me.  I carry the leaves on my feet into the house.  I open to the Way–my life–a labyrinth deep in the forest made of rocks and shredded wood bones.

/raindrops poised at the tip of a blushing leaf after a night of easy constant rain.  A drop of gel-infused water from my hair slides down my glasses.  Both.  Still.

They are not at the mercy of gravity drawn to the earth.  They don’t wait anxiously a fall.  There is no memory of where they have been or where they are going.  They aren’t even aware of where they are.  They simply are.

Trees leave love litter, bright scraps of tender confetti to Gaia.  Little notes of tender touching.  Sunflower bloom’s wrinkled squeezed tight petals that one by one peek out onto the soft warm autumn gray morning.  Divine love.

So here we are in human space suits, walking around with other animals, bumping into nature, watching drama on the debates, laughing, pondering and screaming like a cat face to face with a raccoon.  Every day we intersect with the “other”.

Are we mirrors of ourselves?  Do you really have a separate existence, or am I in a hologram the Divine and I created?  When I was a kid I walked and wondered if I was truly the only being on the planet in an extensive staging.  (Remember the Truman Story?)

Perhaps inside of me there is only me and the Divine.  And in you the same story.  What happens when we mix and match?  You talk, I consider, I talk, you react, I react, we break.  And the cycle happens again.

Sometimes I just want to be in the strong protective shell of the big old car instead of riding vulnerable, extra alert and distracted on the scooter. 

Screaming cats and comfort.

For a warrior bitch, being mild mannered sounds completely weak and wimpy–how could that ever win a war or conquer a country or pave a route to the new land?  But after seeing vanquished fields of family and ruined towers of career, I’ve been willing to give it a try.

It takes a warrior to be quiet.  It takes a bitch that has plowed through deep jungles to sit and watch and listen to a fierce conversation with a feral animal in fear.  Shedding all personal vulnerabilites, donning a shield of pure impenatrable peace, each breath is an elixir of strength.  Each still moment within spreads a light of love.

Every cell in my body nods at the surety of safety.  All my muscles are relaxed yet firm.  I have scouted the land and there is nothing that the Power I hold fears.  Firm on the endless rock of Gaia, standing at home in the venerable forest of sequoia, my hair plaited with Her fairy flowers, I am that I am that I Am.

Breathe in me the way to love
That I might faultlessly love you.

Pour in me Divine wine that
I become intoxicated with you.

Seek out the wandering senses and
Lead them back to you.

Call back the marauding mind and
Counsel it the path back to your heart.

With your silent eyes, just look at me
And I will know where to find you.

You can hide behind the ocean,
You can hide behind illusion.
You can hide behind life,
You can hide behind duality.
You can hide behind theological conundrums.
You can hide behind unanswered prayers.

But you cannot hide behind my love.
In the mirroring light of my love
You are revealed.

(paraphrased from Song of Songs, Yogananda)

Curtains dropped in our path from a friend–bright and matching everything.  My Kwan Yin statue–too much of a discount from a goddess friend to a goddess of a goddess.  A spider plant shoot in a pot for growth left in my hands that grows fond friend memories each day.  A gold laminated box–spectacularly empty always safe–from my daughter of dreams.

Litters of love all around me.

Today I will litter love: gum wrapper smile, banana peel of laughter and joking, slime all over my day of faith shown on my face as I easily complete database projects of scum.  I put on my hip boots and surround myself with armfulls of generosity, kindness and peace.

Facts are facts.  I once was a tree.  I forget what good idea it was for me to be walking, talking and moving around from state to state to skyscraper to valley.  The grass seems to be greener there in the forest surrounded by rooted friends, indulging in time so slowly. 

But my tall spiritual kin remind me that I am a warrior, taking on the lonely task of scouting ahead in feelings.  My time in dark woods is what gives me soft compassion hearing others “would if I could but I should” things that go bump in the black night of the soul.  There is no evil that grows in the night, but lack of the flame of faith that lights the way from within.

I have been still a thousand years soft with moss, tough with rough skin, catching the caress of Sol before others, bending in the circle of wind and season.  I am That I am that today.

It simply is not possible, he said, to not drink for 19 years.  It’s
just not possible.  Nobody can do that.  But one day.  Just about any
one can not drink for one day.  So here it is 19 years of one day one
day one day. 

Still the ups and downs throw me around, the doubts, the insufficiencies that hypnotize me.

But
last night, with impossible friends, we celebrated the impossible with
cheering and hugs and kisses and presents.  (I LOVE presents!) to
celebrate that for 19 years, I have not had a drink, thus didn’t need
to be drunk or ruin any families or gete my name in the paper or lose
my job or anything.

I celebrate me today.

Well, you didn’t know her, but I did.  We worked together for a number of years.  I will always hear her laugh and her shoulders shake.  Just keep on keeping on.  That’s what she told me.  Taught me.  And she did.

Cancer–even after years of diligent mammograms.  Working as best she could despite a ridiculous incompatibility with her boss…and her job…and perhaps even her tasks.  Somehow it seemed that she couldn’t bring her dreams forth into her life.  Not sure what those dreams might have been.  But she kept on.

Though work disputes, misunderstandings, perplexing powerlessness.  Then even more puzzling the cancer.  Then without a job.  Then cancer again.  Then, just recently two strokes in one week.  It certainly was a sign.  When the fluid kept surrounding her heart, we knew that time was short.

We had a party at the foot of her hospital bed and made her laugh.  The corner of her mouth rose up as far as it could and her shoulders shook.  But her wide morphine eyes and body so still and hands placed just moveless so, will never leave my heart.  She kept on.  I’m glad I gave her a kiss, and told her angels were all around her room, always fluttering, gaggling and giggling.

And now she’s teaching the angels just to keep on keeping on.  Thanks Faye.