Yearning for Simplicity

Oh the irony in this one. I feel this growing desire to go back to my roots and explore living a simpler lifestyle.  In suburbia no less. I think it is part of asking myself, after a year with so much change,  what do I want from this life of mine?

I started looking at blogs and found myself totally and completely overwhelmed by all the ideas and advice. Hah...searching for simplicity lead to overwhelming complexity.

I have decided my first step is going to be to listen. 

 

Right now as I listen, I hear

• the slow deep breathing of my sweet five year old labradoodle Cody 
• the hum of the computer 
• the louder hum of the cicadas outside my second floor window

 

As I go deeper, listening moves from a one sensory experieince to being multi-sensory - if I listen with the fullness of my being what do I hear?

• my eyes listen to the warm light of the lamp on my dresser
• my body hears the stuffiness of ragweed allergies, sinus pressure behind my eyes and pushing underneath my temples 
• tension in my neck and shoulders that are trying to bear the unbearable

It is not comfortable to listen to my body right now. I choose to sit with the uncomfortable. and just listen.

In this one moment, stop, listen, what do you hear?

Five Minute Friday: Beauty

Beauty in me?

Hmm....have not thought this direction for awhile when it comes to beauty. Instead I continue to see beauty out there, not in here.  I am in awe of the beauty around me that I bear witness to every day.  Dare I ask myself, Jen, how can you know beauty if you think it no longer resides in you?

Is there beauty in my belly that seems to keep growing?  Can I find beauty in all this extra weight I carry?  I look in the mirror and see one of those ancient mother goddess statues with roll upon roll of flesh spilling forth.  As I look I can imagine those ancient people believing the world was born from her girth. But can I see her  as beautiful?

I think I am holding all the grief and sadness of the past few years. Mostly the past few months. Ryan's death in a car accident, my mom's death from cancer, my husband's surgery to remove the cancer. If I go back a bit further it is also the weight I carry for the daughter I was not able to give birth to. 

Eleven years ago my belly held the new life growing within me that emerged as my sweet precious son.  Now that same belly holds so much grief, uncertainty and sadness.  But as a woman, as a mother, can I believe that the grace of the Sprit is moving through that belly, creating new life and waiting for me to bear that new, wet, unique and precious life into the world.

Can I just dwell in the possibility? Letting Spirit have the how and me the open-hearted trust of being born anew?  In this fifth minute, right now,  I can.

Meanwhile

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
published by Atlantic Monthly Press
© Mary Oliver

a message from my mom

It was about a week after my mom's funeral that I walked onto my back porch.

It had been at least 10 days since my feet last touched those cedar boards. Then, I had been a different person and my mom was still alive. But now everything had changed. I had joined the family of motherless children.

Now I forget why I was out there, but I looked over at the grapevine wreath my mom had made me a few years ago. It's all crazy with twigs sticking out and leaves from last fall caught in its branches. I love it for its wild unruliness. Resting on the inner circle of the wreath, a mama robin had built a nest and inside that perfect container....three exquisite blue eggs huddled together.

I couldn't help but think about me and my two brothers. Little did I know within a few days, my dad would discover a cardinal's nest, my oldest brother a family of baby ducks under a bush in his front yard, and my little brother a nest of finches in a wreath mom made for his front door.

Mom was speaking to all of us and reminding us not only does life go on, but even in the emptiness and sorrow, new life was being born - again and again...around us, in us, through us, because of her and her deep motherly love for all of us.

the seat of our deepest feelings

“Birth is a very special event in the sexual life as a woman. It is a time when you are transformed: you become a mother; you give birth to another human being. This great opening of the womb happens only once or a few times in your life…Your womb is the seat of your deepest feelings.”

Janet Balaskas
Active Birth


Opening is hard.

Uncertainty is our companion. Fear is understandable. And yet, the call of Life asks that we allow ourselves to experience the fullness of birth. In this great opening of the womb, we are raw. Our animal nature will prevail if we let it. We squat, we howl, we rut. We are fully in the moment and wholly consumed by the force of Life that takes over our bodies, our souls, our minds. In birth our power as creators is made manifest.

We participate in a profound transformation. We are giving birth, but we are also being born. Our cries in labor herald another birth – that of a new mother coming forth into the world. We, too, emerge from the fleshy folds of the Great Womb. We are wet with her juices and breathless in this new land.

Once we arrive at this moment, there is no turning back.