Skip to main content

my mountain

6:00 AM  Green Mountain:  Somedays it just feels like the mountain is calling me... a gentle whisper and my heart leaps with longing.  So I don walking shoes and these days, a stocking cap and vest, and begin my sojourn up her sloping trails before school.  Occasionally my heart is heavy and I feel as if the hillsides open in embrace, each step a gift is offered.  Each moment a gesture of life giving back to life.
I often see my tribe.  Deer.  This morning I saw twenty of them along the trail.  I talk to them in hushed tones of welcome, my heart breaking with love.
The colors of fall are already kissing the landscape. Rich, earthy tones.  A constant conversation in texture and hue.  I often stop and stare, amazed that every inch can be filled with so much splendor.  Hiking is rarely exercise for me.  I am too slow, too awestruck...constantly bending to admire a flower, or insect...ears seeking the solace of silence or birdsong or wind.
So many mysteries unfolding, moment by moment, step by step.  That is how life is, isn't it?  It is easier for me to experience it on my mountain.  Life is less chaotic and it stands out in its stillness.  But the same mystery is dancing in everything, everywhere and we are not separate from it.  No matter how sophisticated our attempts at camouflage or how complicated our concepts and beliefs may be.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FORGET ABOUT ‘HEALING’

Some days,  you just have to forget  about ‘healing’. You have to stop trying to feel better, trying to overcome your emotional wounds, or trying to be anywhere other than where you are. You have to embrace the day as it is. And you have to give yourself the most sacred permission of all: To shatter.  To break.  To be an ugly mess. To lean into a place of utter humility and powerlessness in yourself. To cry out to the heavens, “I can’t do this!” To admit utter defeat  in the loss of the life  you had imagined. To crumble to the ground, lonely and hopeless and profoundly ruined. To want to die, even. And there, in the darkest places, in the blackness of the underworld, you may begin to rediscover... life.  And learn to love the beginnings. A sacred reboot: A single breath.  The way the sun warms your face. The sound of a tiny bird singing in the tree over there. The raw simplicity of a single moment of human existence. Hell has been transmuted, thr...
Post a Comment
Read more

a story recently shared by a friend

 Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feelings lived: Happiness, Sadness, Knowledge, and all of the others, including Love. One day it was announced to the feelings that island would sink, so all constructed boats and left. Except for Love. Love was the only one who stayed. Love wanted to hold out until the last possible moment. When the island had almost sunk, Love decided to ask for help. Richness was passing by Love in a grand boat. Love said, "Richness, can you take me with you?" Richness answered, "No, I can't. There is a lot of gold and silver in my boat. There is no place here for you." Love decided to ask Vanity who was also passing by in a beautiful vessel. "Vanity, please help me!" "I can't help you, Love. You are all wet and might damage my boat," Vanity answered. Sadness was close by so Love asked, "Sadness, let me go with you." "Oh . . . Love, I am so sad that I need to be by myself...
7 comments
Read more

He is no longer here

Another day has begun.  I have lit my candles and incense.  Sat in silence. Worked up a sweat at the gym.  Eaten breakfast.  Straightened house.  Answered mail and dropped my man off at the airport. It is eight in the morning and the world stirs with wakefulness.  The sun climbs in the sky.  The birds sing.  The squirrels chip and chur in tree branches.  A dog barks.  And I look with dull eyes at the long day ahead, contemplating a single phrase, "My father is dead." What strange words. My father is dead. The man has been leaving for as long as I can remember and yet his death robs the wind from my lungs.  My chest throbs and throat tightens.  He isn't coming back. My mom and dad had slipped out of one another's lives before I'd barely begun mine.  Two weekends a month my brothers and I stood on a saggy porch, bags packed, eager for our hero to arrive in his old blue Ford to pick us up.  We vibrated with hope...
5 comments
Read more