Like you have to stuff every minute of it with something to do, otherwise you’ll go crazy in the silence; just staring at the walls, living inside your own head.
Or does it feel like solitude?
Does it feel open, spacious…quiet, in a gentle kind of way?
Does it feel like it heals you?
Like it refreshes you; gives you time to be with the things that you’ve lived through on the other side of it…
One of the things I really love about these transitional seasons — like fall and spring — where things are busy dying and being born, is that it’s very easy to become aware of the fact that down deep, below all of it, there’s something larger, something much more powerful at work, pushing itself out into the world.
And so, on one level, we see the returning of the plants. We see the first flashes of greens and yellows and pinks and purples. We hear the birdsongs. We see the blossoms, like those in the ornamental Pear trees across the street, and that’s all just really spectacular.
But below that, way down deep, we’re also aware that that’s life… that untamable force pushing itself out into the world as these things, after all the stillness and death of winter…
Have you ever had a moment in your life where something shifted at a really deep level?
Maybe you’re not even sure what it was, but you just felt that change. And you knew that if you said “Yes” to it, that things would never be the same – that there’d be no going back.
And yet, somewhere, deeper down, you also knew that saying, “No” just wasn’t an option…
So, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the backyard lately, taking care of the ceremonial space that our Community uses when we come together on the first Saturday of every month. It needed a little work, so, I’ve been out there doing that, and it’s me taken a couple of days to wrap things up.
At the end of the first day, I was sitting out on the patio, surveying the yard, taking in my work, and as I looked over at that spot, I was hit with the feeling that the energy of the place had shifted dramatically; that the work we’d be doing there would be different from now on.
It would be deeper.
The place felt like it had grown up, like it had become more rooted, become more… solid.
And I also knew without a doubt that I had to say “Yes” to it, and that once I did, there’d be no going back to the way things were before…
Well, it’s that kind of day; the first of many I’ll have in front of me over the next few months. I weeded the garden, brought out the grill, and dug out the Russian Sage from in front of the house.
I grew up hearing, “Ya gotta eat a peck a’ dirt before you die,” and on days like this I’m probably wearing almost that much on my shirt.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that there’s not a whole lot of things in this world that a good dirt bath can’t cure…
We didn’t really get the crippling snow that a lot of people had this year. We had about eight or ten inches, but it had a crust of ice over the top of it, and because of the low temperatures and the high winds, it took quite a while to melt.
During the heart of it, it kept us homebound for a while, giving us time for quiet reflection, some deep spiritual work, and taking care of some things around here.
It’s good when those moments of solitude open up, especially when you make up your mind to use them. Those of us who learn to feel deeply when we grow up really need those times to charge our batteries, to rest up, to take care of ourselves, and to deal with a lot of things we couldn’t deal with when we’re in the midst of everything else that’s going on…
Bonja the Bodger 