Love is about listening for the signs of love.  Or listening for the signs of fear and surrounding it with the listening of love.  But listening and watching are apparently not easy for me.

They shouldn’t, I should help, we all should, it should be different, there must be a way, stop repeating yourself with the same frustration–do something about it!  Those are my thoughts when I hear fear.  Imagine the inner arguments!  As with most humans, fear throws the human life ball around in the court of love, but with the racket (sic) in my hand, I forget that I am always safely standing on the gentle open heart of Gaia love.  Stuff of which every cell in my body sings.

Today I stand still and let the ball bounce around.  Watch as the world calmly rolls by with me safe, sound and easily watching on a raft in the Way that cannot sink.  I easily listen to the lullaby of love in everything everyone all thoughts all feelings.  Easy is what does it.

It starts with an idea, then it gestates seemingly forever.  When the fruit is full, juicy and ripe, it gently and easily falls from the briar.  The bush has thorns, trying to keep all grabbers from the fruit.  The twisted brambles want it for more progeny rather than share it with eaters.

I claim conception.  I allow myself to indulge in months of internal nourishment, along with tortured doubts, confused future, uncertain birth.

There’s a fire burning within my gut that singes my daily life.  Restless irritable and discontent, I breathe consciously to remain on the ground.  I am once again being called. 

A siren song of hypnotic passion slithers under my skin, making my whole existence itch.  I want to scratch off every routine from my day and peel the old boundaries, patterns and expectations off.  But the tender vulnerability frightens me, and I shrink from the flame.

The fire is always waiting, the burning star rises every mornng spreading ideas and desires and drawing me to begin again and again.  I scream to the dancing fire, the orange flashing fairies that jump and circle the glowing embers: set a torch for me on the path.

Give me courage to walk through this fire to Your music.

Praise to the radiant sun and thank you Allen) for a dawn celebration of the 2008 Autumn Equinox.  Today is the last day of the summer, and tomorrow is that point of the year in the northern hemisphere where the sun seems to be in the middle of the sky, with equal night and equal daytime.

Shall we try balancing an egg on its end tomorrow morning at 8:45 am?  Probably not.  Perhaps starting with harmony–fitting together in agreement, blending different voices and opinions into a melodic music.  Balance, from bi (twice) and lanx (dish)–to have two dishes, to dish it out twice, to have two evenly distributed plates. 

With the warm comfort of walking the labyrinth this morning, the message of stillness creating love stuff, the path beckons me with each step–an adventure of spirit, listening to Her sweet singing.

I walk my dear old dog through the neighborhood.  He whines to come up the basement stairs.  But he does it–one step at a time I tell him.  Once he gets going, he sniffs at corners, grass and dirt as if he’s never been there before.  Years we’ve walked down this street and he will suddenly turn and lift his nose to the air, turn here and there until he finds the smelly treasure.

He teaches me.  Keep sniffing out new smells, look underneath the old ones, turn over stones, lift the rock and you will find Her there.  Nature, Gaia, attraction, manifestation, growth and continuum. 

The best illustration of how I am intrinsically part of the Divine, but not “God”, is that I am a wave on the ocean.  I’m not the ocean.  But I’m a really good wave on the ocean that has everything in it that the ocean does.  Maybe I don’t have a whale or orca all the time as part of me the wave, but I am essentially the ocean.

So what would I do today as a really good wave of the most majestic Ocean today? 

If the Divine wanted to take part in this adventure on Gaia, what would She want to do today living through and as me?!  Look out world!!!

The tiny creature rustled.  Feeling movment, she stretched and discovered her limbs.  She wiggled her toes and smiled.  She realized she smiled and giggled.  With a deep breath of peace and expectancy–without expectations–she opened her eyes.  She blinked and rubbed her eyes with her little fingers and stared and stared. 

“I am!” she squealed.  “I am, I am, I am!”  Looking all around her at the cozy nest, the swirling unveiling, the stars and the brilliance she said with a deep contented sigh, “I am hoooommme.”

And the cosmos exploded into life.

So what if life on earth is the most fantastic place in this side of the universe!?  What if we were here JUST to enjoy ourselves, that we couldn’t fail, that there was no such thing as mistakes, that pain was just another twisted pathway to some new adventure and that death was a JOKE!?

What if death was a joke.  That all those who we know have gone before us are there at the gate laughing out loud and welcoming us to the sidelines after a terrific game.  Slapping us on the back, cheering and roaring at how much fun it must have been to be here now.

Take a look around: grass has no tight shoulders.  Leaves have no churning stomach.  The pre-dawn angel clouds dance in celebration of soaring heights that give us hint of endless dimensions.  The setting moon howls at our short-sighted silliness seen from a larger perspective.  The furry pines invite soft strength, the cluster of poplars applaud my playing on this plane.

As my first boyfriend said to me after an hour of wrestling: “This is supposed to be fun!”

It’s not the northeast, but the trees are gradually changing colors.  What is it?  They lose sugar, or sugar deposits or something like that and the leaves get cut off from producing green, the sap stops running and they blush and fall.

I wonder if that would happen if I stopped eating sugar.  My body wouldn’t ache so much, that’s for sure.  I think my sap would circulate even better.  With all the carbos in my body I feel stiff, rigid and like a rock of sugar crystalized.

What if I could change as easily and gracefully as the seasons.  Slowly bending to the shifting of the sun, the coolness in the air, the changes at work, and a new horizon for my path.  Simply to pause and shuffle my feet in a new direction.  I can’t fall off the path, I am guaranteed a brilliant view in every direction, and an adventure is inevitable.

I call upon the four elements, four seasons that mark the edges of natural change–according to the stations of the sun.  I call upon Isis and Persephone who have wondrously blessed these cyclical paths on the land of my life.  Hand in hand, I easily transform.

Addiction came late in life, really.  Escaping began by the time I was 3 or 4 I think.  And many years later I grow to realize that there really is no escape.  Perhaps after death, but the way Nature shows it, it’s just a neverending cycle, so I doubt it.

Listening to the unending despair of those trying to escape feelings, duties, life, worries, heartache, boredom to no avail reminds me that the long way around of escape is still a useless detour to the same spot.  I can’t avoid feelings.  I can’t get away from the urge to change my whole life, and the subconscious (or conscious) desire for the so-called “final” escape of death doesn’t seem promising.

So I put on the hipboots, get my tools strapped on and gloves handy and trudge through the feelings.

One of those helpful hands is yours.  You reading this–the story of you reading this–that I am not alone is essential.  Actually, I have to speak, write and listen to me and I open my heart to the Divine Oneness, the Creator, the Dear Lady to reinforce in me that I am never alone.  Sometimes she dresses up as a mentor, a friend, a partner, a child, and sometimes she is in the leaves of the bush that gently waves at me in the September sun.

Thank godness that I am never alone and need no escape from She who is closer to me than my skin.