Wednesday, July 12th, 2006

Yesterday in our yard I heard a cracking sound, and it was followed by the surrender of an huge and ancient plum tree as it gave way and toppled to the ground. The house we live in is over 100 years old, a farmhouse whose history lives most truly in its last witnesses, the ancient trees that encircle it.

With its falling the landscape changed. This is how the things in our life fall most often, suddenly and without warning, and when they go the landscape of our lives has changed. We stop telling our stories the same way, and find that the heart of them is even much deeper than we knew.

We often associate harvest with times of abundance, and forget that these times of abundance come into being quite often through the ashes left after destruction or times of harshness or confusion. These ashes feel empty and worthless, yet it is they that bring the fruits, and the shortest path from one to the other is hope.

The hope I speak of comes not from promises or guarantees. This hope comes from something even more substantial…learning to love and ride the waves of change so that their momentum becomes the wind that gives you flight. It is like the juice of a grape crushed in the hand, only in the crush is the juice released.

It involves surrender, and surrender involves trust. It takes trust to start a new life with only the remains of what came before. It takes trust to find strength when there is nothing to hold onto. And yet this is how we were born, and how we are each born in each moment. This is the gateway to rebirth.

As you go to sleep tonight dream about your rebirth, what you would like to let go of and make new in your life…what grapes may be waiting outside your window to be crushed into the juice of your future or continued abundance.

Saturday, July 1st 2006

These days things are changing so fast that it is easy to get lost in the blur. We are all a part of an old mandala of sand that is being blown clear, and both the impermanence, and the impending new birth, are staggering.

When one needs energy for a great expedition, like the one we have entered on this earth, it must come from somewhere. Energetically we have so many options…nature, loved ones, communion with our guides, creativity…these are all excellent ways to tap into our limitless energetic resources and be re-inspired, re-centered and renewed for the trip.

But there are times when even these wonderful reminders seem distant, most significantly when we are feeling discouraged by what we see around us, and when others we have shared with are drifting away from us. At many crucial crossroads in our lives, we find that in order to walk our true path, we diverge from others we have walked with for a long time. Sometimes this leads us to associate the new path with loss, but there is also a promise in what sometimes seems like loss. It is the promise that there are new people waiting to enter our lives that match the vibration we have entered during our time of self-redefinition. There is also always the promise that we will meet again all the people we have truly loved, on one dimension or the next.

Sometimes some of the people in our lives are the last thing holding us back from what we are praying for. When our company does not reflect our dreams, the incongruency creates an energy block. This does not at all mean that there are times we just have to wait out and work through things with people, it just means that if there are people in our lives who we no longer truly commune with, or who do not celebrate us, it may be time to reevaluate what we have come to think of as friendship.

Sometimes it isn’t even an obvious rift or issue, but just a gradual parting of ways. I once dreamt that my best friend, at the time, and I were about to jump in and swim across a river. Halfway across I realized that she hadn’t jumped in with me and wouldn’t be coming. I knew I had to swim across anyway.

Sometimes we have to shed everything we have known in order to have everything we have dreamed of. If some friends exit our lives, we must know that it does not have to mean we must be on a solitary journey. It may just signify that we can use this more solitary period to pray and get more and more clear, and that when we are ready the new energies and friendships will be waiting for us. No matter how much we hear or read about letting go, it so often seems unnatural…as if we were born with clenched hands. The more we practice letting go, we find that rather than something to fear as related to loss, it is something to cherish as related to making space for new and even more fitting gifts. Because, as we all know deep in our hearts, we were born from the universe with open hands.