Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Last night I unraveled a scarf I’d been knitting.  I’d run out of yarn and needed to start over in a different way.  What surprised me, having never unraveled like that, (I only know how to knit scarves) was how good it felt, and how like to what I had been feeling within me it was.  All season long I have felt such solace because as I have been letting go the earth too has been letting go at the very same time all around me.  She is ready for the release of what has passed and the new cycle to come.  And in this letting go has been the unraveling of all that was woven until then.

I thought about the relief when something that you have invested yourself so much in crumbles.  I know we often feel the pain of that, but last night I just thought about the relief.  There is something so good about un-investing yourself, when it is right.  Something so good about retracing your steps backward until you are where you started and can start again.  And while unraveling all that you have thought yourself to be, or tried to become can be unsettling…scary…terrifying even…it also sets you free.

And then I thought about the fact that the better you get at becoming and releasing, the more intense it becomes…the constant dissolving of identity.  And the more powerful and subtle the new identifications become.  So all the while as the universe has had our little planet thrown around in an incredible, tumultuous ocean of energies in these past few weeks, I have been spending whatever time needed to bail out the boat, crash onto the shore, sink, swim, hang onto pieces of wood, and let go of it all, and the rest of the time absolutely, unashamedly, in love with the little things.

I have been in love with fall.  In love with the colors of the leaves and the crisp air and sharp sun.  In love with the return of the rain, the puddles, and the cold.  I have been in love with the green leafy vegetables that are still happy to be harvested at the local farms.  I have been in love with knitting scarves again, pumpkins on the porch, and hula hooping in my living room.  I have been in love, for the first time in my life, with baking.  And with the new plants in our new yard, strawberries, and playing with my new neighborhood girlfriends who are all under the age of eight.  And all my old loves…writing, dancing, connecting with people, and so many more…all have a new flame and sparks about them.  The veils between the worlds are just barely thinning and I am already feeling the new life beneath the winter snow.

I know we are all falling apart.  Our castles are crumbling and the earth is giving way under our feet more often than not.  We are brave to get up most days, even if life seems smooth on the outside…to have an Oracle heart is to be sensitive enough to always have such depth and intensity within, and to be sensitive at all times to such greater movements.  It takes courage, and remembering how courageous you are to be in the first wave at this time of great change.  While we experience at times even devastation, and at times just that unending unraveling, it will help to remember to fall in love with any little moments…any little things you can.  Give yourself over to that love every time you get the chance.  It will fill you and feed you and nourish you.  It will allow you to be a lover in all senses of the word, and the universe needs as many lovers as it can get.

In the image with this writing there is a woman leaning over her weaving, exhausted and perhaps heartsick.  Above her, another woman is happily picking the apples from the tree that is so abundant, and that is going unseen by the woman weaving.  Remember to pull away from the consuming weaving work of your life, however beautiful sometimes, and look for the fruit.  Life is happening in the cracks, and pushing through the old walls…and we haven’t, seen anything, yet.

Love, Jennifer

Friday, October 9th, 2009

I have been thinking about falling.  I watched Alice in Wonderland the other night, and thought about her fall down the rabbit hole.  Instead of crashing toward a new ground, her skirt billows out and she floats.  She is able to witness many worlds on her way to a new one, and sip some tea, sit on a chair for a while, and even read a book or two.  Sure, when she lands everything is upside-down, but she quickly adjusts and moves on to explore the strange new land she has arrived in.

Energies continue to build right now in such intense ways, and, as it has been so much especially in these last five years, just when we think they couldn’t increase even more…they do.  We are constantly being asked to expand and adapt, and it never seems to end.  We get short respites, but for those of us on the edge (because we want to be of service and because there is just nothing, in spite of the pain we endure for it, like the thrill of it…) it is sometimes a wonderful and wild ride, and at other times about as rough as it can be.  At times we ride on the surf, and at others it slams us against the sand, against ourselves, like never before.  Broken, we pick ourselves up again, and, like Alice, reorient, and reinvent ourselves.   We take the scraps, the leftover bits and strings, the remains, and we make something new and beautiful from sheer will, and with only the glue of hope sometimes to hold it together.

But even as we continue to crash against the rocks, a deeper resilience is being born.  It is a resilience bred by eternal love, and it is those seeds of that hope we gather that will grow the new world.  It is the light that never goes out in our hearts that will illumine our way to a new path of joy…not later, but now…it becomes a thread woven into what we are already living…and slowly takes over our realities.  From this lead that arises in these challenging times, personally and collectively, we will make gold.  We will remember the gold we have hidden deep within us.  It will emerge, and shine.

The thing about falling is that it seems dangerous, because in the physical form it really can be…but falling within can be different.  It can be like Alice’s journey down the rabbit hole and we might as well sit back in the floating rocking chair and read for a while on our way to a new place.  It may take its time, and we should find every joy we can in the meantime.  Yes, falling on the inside can bring about the same terrible feeling at first…that there is nothing to hold onto…that we have lost all sense of our bearings and don’t know whether we will ever find them again…that we are on our way to disappearing completely somehow.  But if we find out we can relax and let go into it, it suddenly feels like freedom.  We realize that it’s that its everything that no longer suits us that is falling away, and all that is left is what is most pure and true within.  We are left with our essence in its greatest grace, and we are light enough…to float.

So if you’ve been wondering if anything will ever take off the way you hope it will in your life…if the obstacles will ever move aside…if your physical body will ever heal…if your emotional wounds will ever be completely put behind you…if you will ever find a friend much less a lover….if your world is going to fall apart or not, or if you’ll ever know what to do with the pieces after it has…take heart.  Even if it feels that your heart is ready to explode…it won’t.  Take a deep breath, and let yourself fall.  After all we fall into love, and this is all, no matter how dark the tunnel ever seems, we are ever doing.

Love, Jennifer