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The Dark Heart of Winter

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Winter is here and the wide world grows smaller as I huddle into the safe sanctuary of my sweet home, my little nest. Here I live in a round ruby-colored haven, a jewel set in a meadow of green.  Winter has not yet ensconced us in terminal grey, warmer days than usual and even sun have greeted us. The tall trees that stand around my home are reaching upward. As I sit, right outside my window, hemlock is waving her soft fringed branches in the breeze, sunlight pouring down on her.

The sun is setting at 4:30, and I am indoors so much more this time of year. There’s a sweetness to this, life feels very small and contained. Not in a rigid way, but in a way of gentleness, of tending hearth and home. Both on the physical plane, and on the inner plane, the realm of soul. This is a time of turning inward, looking into the dark places inside myself, making peace, and making space for new blossoming to come when the time is right.

I’m acutely aware of how busy my life is, how often I am pushing and striving, how I fill my time with social visits, work, even the garden which takes so much care. Seems I always have something I “must do.” I’m choosing to set that down for a while, choosing to get still, and small, and quiet. My perception of the demands of the world will always be there, there will always be something I must do, and I am the only one who can relieve myself of that burden. And I’m not saying that’s an easy thing! These patterns are so ingrained that creating pockets of stillness feels challenging, creates unease in my belly, and I even feel fear arise.

I look back over the years of my adulthood and I think I’ve missed many opportunities to take winter deeply in. This time of year gives us a chance to slow down, but we have to be willing to take that chance, to set things down, to choose to embrace the fertile darkness and the inner time. I know this, and I feel it to be so true, but I tend to get stuck filling long dark evenings with television or scrolling on the Internet. But there is an opportunity here to deepen into my own heart, to make beauty with my hands, and to have more time where I’m doing absolutely nothing. But I have to choose this. I have to be the one to put down the remote, or maybe even unplug the television for a while. To bridge the moments of uncomfortable stillness and trust this intuition that stillness and quiet are so necessary.

Just now there are two towhees on the ground outside my window, their tails held high, they bow and dip, digging in the earth for some delightful morsel to eat, they lift their heads and look about,. make contact with their companion and go about their work. How right they are in the world, how totally themselves. How would it feel to have freedom like that? Freedom to eat, fly, and nest, but most of all freedom from the tyranny of the mind that tells me I always have something I must do. How can I break that cycle, and find deep peace and ease in my bones? A recalibration in my nervous system towards stillness? A true setting down of the puritanical work ethic that seems to thrum inside of me all the time pushing me ever forward or chastising me if I refuse to be pushed…. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

As usual, I don’t have any solid answers, just more questions and more questions. Yet I do have a sense, a glimmering of possibility, a knowing that it could be another way. And I’m going to choose that, even if it’s unformed and not quite tangible yet. Even if it makes me uncomfortable as hell. Even if I forget, and fall off course, and beat myself up for it. I’m still going to try, I’m going to follow the thread of longing, for still and quiet dark winter nights.

The Christmas tree lights sparkle, I sit and look at this beautiful altar to the Christmas spirit and to light returning. I sip my tea and feel grateful for the safety of my home. The containment of my small world that feels so gentle. My tea is hot and creamy, spicy Chai with just a touch of sweetness. My body is cozy, wrapped in layers and warm slippers. Mac the cat sleeps on the cushion of the chair beside me, pouring out a sense of radiant contentment at the comfort of his body, nestled just so in the softness of the cushion.

It’s all so beautiful, this small and quiet life of mine. So far from the hustle and bustle, the fray of the years of active parenting. Now I only have myself to get ready for the day, and the evenings are luxuriously long. A fact both startling in its beauty, and arresting in fear. What do I do with my wild and precious life when I I’m the one who must make it what I long for it to be? Sovereignty, so beautiful and so terrifying.

For this day, for this season I am going to choose to let myself not know. I am going to choose to be in the liminal space between things. I am not young and I am not old. I am not rich and I am not poor. I am not certain and I am not lost. I am, slowly, so slowly, arriving. Arriving into what? I couldn’t tell you… But something is unfolding inside of me that is mysterious and magnificent. This life that I am weaving, I can’t quite see the warp and the weft forming together into tapestry yet, yet I sense and know that tapestry it will become if I stay the course. Maybe that’s what this winter is about. Maybe this is a winter of weaving, of pattern making, of allowing the colors of the thread to choose me rather than me choosing them. I trust the pattern. I trust the slow growing of cloth. I trust myself. And I trust the darkness.

Leaves – A Love Song

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The trees astound me with their generosity. They hold nothing back. Each year the cycle begins again, the gathering of sunlight, the storing of energy, carbon, the creation of new leaves. Leaves that emerge baby soft and fine, pale yellow, light green, chartreuse. Leaves so tender they look like blossoms. Putting on bulk and weight, spreading out over the tops of canopies, glorious crowns, snarled reaching branches, forming the lush foliage of summer’s blessed shade.

Autumn comes and the slow surrender begins, the letting go. Leaves lose their luster, the edges beginning to dry, spots of brown or gold mottling their surface. Some change to brown, light and crisp; they float on the air, piling up in mounds, drifts, oceans. Some blaze bright before they fall, gold and red, orange and amber, and every shade in between. Death can be beautiful too. This I learned first from leaves, and then from old people.

The trees seem to surrender their leaves so easily, they must trust that next year the cycle will begin again, they must know that as long as they are standing tall on this earth life will move in them, and through them, creating the magical rhythm of leafing out, spreading wide, and falling to the earth again. What if we had trust like that? Trust in our cycles, in the turning of time, in the rightness of it all. What if we knew our place in the web, could we surrender as completely as trees?

I walk among the leaves, and I bend to pick them up with delight. To look at their shape, the pattern the veins make across their surface, to feel the firmness of a leaf stem clasped between my fingers and thumb, I roll them back and forth admiring how the colors shift in the light. I will never grow tired of autumn leaves, the wonder of this generous beauty will always leave my heart humbled, gratitude echoing around the chamber inside my chest, a whisper of thank you on my lips.

I remember when I was small, and we lived in the city where streets had sidewalks, and many of them were planted with trees. I knew those sidewalks so well, I knew where every tree root pushed up against the surface of the pavement to create a crack, and I would roll over those cracks on my scooter, or my bike using it like a little jump of sorts, some novelty in my ride.

I remember walking in the autumn with my mother, and her teaching me the French words for the colors of the rainbow. Jaune is yellow. Yellow like the leaf fallen from a big leaf Maple, on the grey sidewalk, before it’s been crushed under foot. Yellow leaves lying perfect in their form, utterly beautiful.  I kicked them with my boots, my small feet loving the sound of the crunch crunch as I walked through piles of leaves.

I knew a marvelous old woman once, Ruth. Who lived in the retirement home where I worked. She was that perfect combination of spicy and sweet, a woman who loved deeply, and would also take you down a peg if you needed it, or maybe, if she was just in the mood to do so. She was legally blind but could somehow always tell if I’d gained a pound, and would not hesitate to tell me “ you are so beautiful, but honey you need to watch your weight.” I know you probably cringe reading these words, but I smile in fond remembrance. Those words truly were spoken with love.

I remember sitting with Ruth on an autumn day and speaking of the leaves. The beauty of autumn in Oregon, the way the sky sparkled blue, and there was a nip in the air, and the lovely scent of summer ending. The earth getting ready for a long winter sleep. A soft dreaminess came over Ruth’s face, and 100 watt smile emerged, drawing back the corners of her mouth creasing the corners of her eyes, the wrinkled cartography of her face transforming as she traveled in her mind. “You know I used to love to kick the leaves on the street, I can still hear how they would crunch crunch under my feet… I can’t walk anymore, but I remember.”

When I am old and grey, and sitting in a window. Will I still remember the look of the leaves on the sidewalk, the sound of the crunch crunch, the pleasure of walking hand in hand with my mother? Will I remember the generosity of trees? The thousand ways they’ve blessed my life, the hours spent sitting nestled in their roots, the days spent hiking looking up at their towering trunks and canopies… I think I will.  And if I’m fortunate, I’ll have someone to tell about it.

Could I be like maple?
Standing tall, always reaching for the light.
Roots sinking down through dark, rich soil, winding around stones and broken pipes
to find the wellspring of life.
The living water.
Could I burn brightly?
My leaves shimmering in an exaltation of gold and red and scarlet, vermilion, even lavender.
A cacophony of color, unbridled life that gives way into death.
Leaves falling from maples high branches litter the ground in a carpet of glory.
I walk on them, my boots feel too brown to trod on such a delight as this.
In a months’ time, these glorious tailings, falling from maples branches
 will turn to brown and then to soil.
Feeding her roots and preparing to once again set leaves come springtime.
Oh, how much I learn from the trees.
Their constant and ever-present generosity, their willingness to rise again, and fall again
and rise again, and fall.
Do they grieve their leaves as they drop towards the Earth, or is it pure surrender, the letting go of what must be done in order for something new to emerge, to sprout, to rise upward
Carbons knitting together, to create the pattern of life, everybody is reaching for the sun. Everybody is reaching for the water.
And this is life, the somersault of beginning, and ending, the way form gives way to absence and then form again, and I too am part of this.
I too, in my woman’s body one day will become dust and then perhaps, I will become maple.

Seasons Turning – Autumn Comes

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Today is the autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere. We arrive again at the threshold, crafted by seasons and time, the changing of the sun, the tide ebbs. I’ve been feeling the change since the middle of August, the sun hanging lower in the sky, a little bit of chill in the air at night, dry grasses giving the land that tawny autumnal glow. It’s a bittersweet time, in some ways I’m always ready for the seasons to change, to step into something new, to recenter. And yet its hard to let summer go.

 Summer is a season of incredible energetic outpouring, working on the land, outdoor adventures, later nights and less sleep. Summer feels full of fervor and exuberance, and I truly love it. This whole span of time from late spring until the end of harvest season I am out on the land so much. Hands in the soil, feet in the soil, body in the river, hair soaked with sweat. I’m watching the seeds go into the ground and whispering prayers over them, I’m watching the little shoots sprout up and begin their cycle of life, watching them put on leaves and fruit, harvesting and eating and preserving. I love it, and I am exhausted.

And now autumn calls, with her soup pots bubbling and long walks with falling leaves. With quiet evenings at home, hot tea in my favorite mug, dreams of art supplies littering my little table, and driving home in the dark again. It seems to me that each year I get older the seasons grow sweeter, and I feel the changes more acutely, both in the earth around me and inside of my own body. The earth within me. It feels good to let things change, it feels good to surrender to the cycle of the year, the wheel of time, and the ever changing present. As if we had any choice! And yet, to see the pleasure of this seasonal arc, and feel held within it, is somehow so tender for me.

I think part of that is because there’s a way that I’m able to pay attention to life that is exquisite to me, and it hasn’t always been this way. So many years were spent in anxious survival. Being a young mother, and then in an absolute disaster of a marriage, never really making enough money, throw a little bit of addiction into the mix, and you can imagine from there…  It hasn’t been an easy ride. which makes me all the more grateful for the simple beauty in which I sit in my days now.

I can’t claim luxury, I have such a simple life. But it’s beautiful, and it’s handmade and crafted by me to suit my needs and my desires. I get to be present in my life, to be free of the chronic and painful tensions I lived with for so long. I get to craft my days so that I have time to be with the earth and the sky, time for writing, time to notice the changing seasons, to grow food and eat good food, to gather herbs and make medicine, to spend hours in the evening reading poetry, or lying on the floor of my beautiful little home with my cat purring at my side. It’s all so simple, and I’m simply so grateful.

In this time of seasons changing, this time of surrender, of looking within as the autumn calls us to do, I’m thinking about what skins need to shed. About what I’m ready to set down. About what I’m releasing and who I’m becoming. It doesn’t all feel clear yet, and that’s completely OK with me. Answers come when answers come, and the inquiry is really the interesting part of the journey anyway.

Over the summer months, there’s been a lot of inner work happening around some wounds that I have carried and the ways they manifest in the world. I’ve become aware of this cloak of fear that I’ve lived with throughout all of my conscious life. The fear of somehow not being enough, not belonging, being too much, being exiled. This undercurrent of fear has caused me to shape-shift and morph myself into a way of being that I perceive to be more pleasant to others. This is one of the big endings that I’ve been undertaking. The ending of the story that I need to be anything different than I am.

I’ve been growing braver, I’ve been speaking my mind more, expressing how I truly feel, even when it scares the shit out of me, I’ve been asking for more money, learning not to say yes when I want to say no, and figuring out how to truly listen to the signals of my body so that I can make choices that are in alignment with my true needs. It’s been subtle, my life looks much the same as it did in May, but my experience of being in it is really quite different. There’s a fierceness in me that I didn’t know before. There’s a resoluteness, something inside of me isn’t standing up. Broad-shouldered, strong-eyed, Free of the giggling simpering of girlhood. I think I’m truly becoming a woman. Which, at 42, you may think about time… But I would argue that many adults never really leave the stage of late adolescence. So I’ll take it. I’ll take this broad-shouldered, broad-smiled, strong spine, soft-bellied, wide open-hearted woman, I’m becoming.

So the seasons turn, and we turn with them. And as autumn arrives I take this opportunity to turn inside. I take this opportunity to close the hatches a bit, to lay off the throttle, to sit back into the sweetness of my life, and the unknown unfolding of my becoming. Before long rain will start to drip down my windows, and the tawny grasses will grow green again. And then, I’ll be dreaming of planting seeds in the soil and pea shoots and early blooms. But for now, just for now, I’m going to get still. I’m going to sit in the beauty of the simple life that I have created. I’m going to look into my own heart and see what’s ready to be set down. Emptying out the oil to make space for the new. Some interior sorting I suppose you could say. Sounds like a good thing to do as the days grow shorter.  I’m going to leave you with some beautiful words from David Whyte, this line hums in my heart so often…autumn blessings to you all.

“You must learn one thing.
The world was meant to be free in. “

Sweet Darkness
by David Whyte

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

The Dance of Change – On Christmas Quiet and Lifes Shifting Tides

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It’s Christmas morning. The hustle and bustle of Christmas mornings in the past feel like an ancient memory, an entirely different life than the one I now live. All those years of rising early to make a special breakfast, celebrate my husband’s birthday, open stockings and gifts with my daughter, and then rushing about visiting are over.

My daughter is now a young woman living on her own, and I am divorced and living in my little cabin in the woods, it seems that almost everything in my life it’s entirely different than it was three years ago. And there is freedom in this truth, and also a healthy amount of sorrow and longing, and wishing that endings could have been different than they were. Though not wishing that the endings hadn’t happened.

The heart is such strange territory to travel in. I wonder if while I am alive in this human form I will ever understand my own heart’s ways. How it can long so deeply for the past, while simultaneously knowing that in that past, my heart longed even more deeply for something to change. For some new beginning to happen. For a new life to be born. And now it has, and my tricky old heart cooks up a stewpot full of nostalgia. Maybe she’s just fucking with me.

So Christmas morning I wake alone, well, not entirely. My cat is remarkably good company, and a generous cuddler on winter nights. I climb down from the loft and heat some water on the stove. Some things never change, coffee being one of these solid fixtures of my days.

I take my coffee to my altar, sit on my cushion and light my candles. My life now has a generous space woven into it. I have time each morning undisturbed to set and say thank you for my life, to appeal to the forces of nature, and the deities I work with, to know them, to be of service to this life, that my family be held and well protected, that a new world be woven again out of the wreckage and ashes all around us.

As I sit on my cushion, something within me settles deeply. I feel the weight of my own form become somehow more solid and surrendered. I feel my breath become fuller and my eyes fill with tears. How grateful I am for my life, daily I am astounded by the depth of this feeling. Honestly, I can hardly believe the beauty. I can hardly believe that I get to be alive in a human body today. That I get to breathe air, a gift from the green bloods. I get to look up at my tallest friends, the Douglas firs that surround my home, I know there are ways now. I know how they look in the summer in the winter. I know how they look and the dawn and at 2:00 AM in the morning. I know their scent and they know mine.

Years ago a friend of mine who had been through a divorce told me that it was like a death. I listened, but I didn’t understand. I spent so many years in a marriage that felt like a prison, the anger and resentment in my heart growing high around, like a wall of briars that I couldn’t see through. I couldn’t understand that even through that impenetrable wall of thorns, that the ending of a marriage, my marriage, is a death. I couldn’t possibly understand then how painful it would be.

I sit at my altar and I allow myself to drop into the empty space between my ribs, around my heart, down towards my belly. It’s heavy and dark, it pulses with the soft ache of lost dreams. The tender hunger of a little girl that believed in forever. The desperate which gyrations of a young woman trying everything in her power to make something work that never could have. It was rotten at the center. My marriage had a grail king wound. and neither my husband or I knew to ask the sacred question. So it was never asked. And only festered. Until it grew large enough to swallow all of the attempts at beauty we had made.

Sometimes the space in my life feels like a joy, and sometimes and endless chasm. Over the last three years as I have learned to be a woman on my own in this world, I have had two, no, I have chosen to sit down and learn to face myself. The constant noise And endless doing that we find ourselves Addicted to and this time, are an incredibly convincing distraction. More space and time is what we all say that we want, but once we have that what will we do with it? And how does it actually feel to have the time to sit and know yourself.

I can only speak for myself. It is Absolutely gorgeous and totally terrifying. Without so much of the constant doing and hubbub of living in a small home with other people I find myself frequently deep in thought. Rolling ideas around in my mind, feeling my emotions and reactions more deeply, creating a rhythm of my days that holds me more gently.

Spending so much more time alone has dramatically changed the way that I move through the world. The sentience of the world has shifted, and life has come alive in a way far greater than I imagined was possible. You’re never alone when you feel connected to and held by the more than human world. The Douglas fir trees, my tall friends, know me and love me as much as I know and love them. And this is not an abstraction, this is not a thought, this is a deep knowing in my bones. We belong to each other. I to this land and this land and all her inhabitants to me.

It’s interesting to reflect on how aloneness has really taught me relationality. In the acute stage of rending, as my world tumbled apart, I felt that I would forever feel abandoned and alone. But gratefully that is not so. Gratefully I have not only a human community that loves me deeply, but I have found my way into the wide lap of this great and generous earth. And we have claimed each other. My life path utterly changed by this truth.

As I sit here now at the end of my second cup of coffee, I feel peace in the quiet around me. This day when we celebrate the birth of light, the birth of the holy, the possibility of the sacred walking the earth, I welcome the newness in my days. Even when there is a taste of sorrow, or a breeze of fear blows by me. I am eager to continue walking this path of my life, to see what is being born anew inside of me. And how it will root down and rise up in this world. As always I have more questions than answers, but I no longer think of that as a fault. I think of it as a gift. My life is a gift. One I am so grateful to receive.

From my quiet little home and heart to yours wherever you may be. I wish you comfort and joy, I wish you the sense of being held and tendered well, and I wish all of us peace on earth and goodwill towards all of life. Let us all birth the holy on our breath and with our hands, and do the good work of weaving a new world together.

Seed Heart

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Every day this world breaks me open, a sliver of delight pierces through the veil, a chasm of sorrow consumes me, and I fall, down, down, down. The glint of light on the throat of a Hummingbird, part fuchsia part crimson all glorious. A hungry feral cat cowers near the trash compactor at my daughter’s apartment complex, their green eyes haunt me, and I am filled with longing.

I often wonder if my capacity for feeling, so visceral, so rich in texture and form, is the same experience of being in the world that others have. In truth, I wonder if perhaps I hurt more than I should, feel more than I should, yet even as I write those words deep inside there is a knowing, that I am how I am and who I am not by accident, that even if the intensity of life unfolding around me can be hard to bear at times, it is my unfolding, it is my life.

Sometimes I want to hide, to crawl down deep somewhere that I cannot be disturbed, somewhere safe and dark and devoid of feeling. A bottle used to work so well, the safest place I’ve ever been, but also the most lonely. So I don’t pick it up. Today I sit in the grey cave of my heart, under a startling blue sky. Can you feel the contrast? The is and is not of the thing? How can life be simultaneously so beautiful and so heartbreaking?

I come home from work, the frantic pace of the day, the large tears of the old woman in the hallway, they seem to be always running down her face these days, and I never have enough grace to reach her, the hungry eyes of lonely people, the traffic accident I witnessed, all of this living in my body. I kneel down at my altar, light a candle, and beg for strength. I place my forehead on the sharp wooden edge, the pressure digging into my skin feels like  relief, and I weep. I weep for all the hurts I cannot heal, the suffering that exists despite all of the love, my own broken family, my own broken heart.

And then I remember what I have known all along. Words spoken to me, words that found a home inside my flesh and now reside there- a human heart, shaped like a seed and meant to break- let it break- break open….recalling this, a poem comes back to me, my own words filling the cracks and broken places inside, my own words a balm, a poultice for this wound of life, this wild sacred dance that is more than I can bear. Perhaps these words will enter you, and ease your pain, or bring to your doorstep an appropriate portion of suffering, whatever it is you need, may you find it. I leave this here, an offering for all those who know the taste of sorrow, and the taste of joy.

Seed Heart

I know the bottom well
the dark place where the tendrils grow from
nothing is birthed only from the light after all
I have curled my body in the shape of a seed and been fallow
no movement- no song – no seeing
spent winter there in that formless torpor
waiting for the urge to root down
and to rise up

I am woman, but I have a heart
shaped like I seed and meant to break
I seek refuge in the smell of humus
the leaflitter, the dappled almost day
slowly warming, slowly warming
set the tap root
 deep- deep
then the branch roots
wide – wide

The only way to know rising is to wait
hold patience like a wand in your hands- until
called forth by forces beyond words
A shoot emerges from the fertile dark
and you breathe air once again.

When people ask me if I believe in god- I always say yes
god is the power that calls the flowers up to bloom
but maybe I have been wrong
maybe god is the seed or the darkness or the waiting
maybe god is the patience
or maybe the breaking
or maybe, my own seed shaped heart.



Being Human

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Sometimes revelations of great importance come seemingly out of the blue. Or, out of the gray fog of dawn light, driving down the road with the windshield wipers on my truck swishing side to side, in an attempt to keep those tiny droplets of water from gathering to obstruct my view. It seemed like nothing at first, just a thought, that echoed around inside my body as thoughts sometimes do. “ there is nothing wrong with you Marianna.”

It is strange when thought is delivered into my consciousness from elsewhere and I receive, rather than create it. Strange that a belief this deep can kind of skirt around the edges. If you were to ask me if I thought I was fundamentally broken just by my humanness, I think I would say no. the concept of original sin makes me gag, I mean have you ever seen a baby? There is NO sin there, of this, I am quite certain. Yet under my conscious knowing, there is a deep shame and guilt associated with being human at this time, and in this way.

My individual suffering has its own flavor, I will not say it is a unique, Rather I would imagine that it is similar in taste and texture to the suffering of many other human beings. Wondering about our place in the world and society, fear of somehow trespassing or being wrong, shame about the unhealed darkness, the bruises, and imperfections we perceive in our character. I could go on and on, but you get the point, you may even be shaking your head to say yes, yes, this is my suffering too.

The thought that came to me this morning as I drove, was not related to this particular pathology, the swirling critical mind that seeks flaws in order to find a pattern and get to some semblance of safety. This part of the mind that seems to want to tear me apart, so that others don’t have the chance to do it first. No, this wrongness that my inner self spoke of was the unseen belief that by simply being in a human body I am wrong. How could I be right, how could I be ok, when my entire species has run amuck in a crazy carnival of destruction, hubris, and greed? This wrongness I feel in so many of my days is not personal, it is collective. It is the sense brought on by disavowing the original instructions, it is the poverty of power unchecked and forgotten promises that wreak havoc beyond our ability to comprehend. All of this is true, it is not subjective, it’s not a story, it’s a fact.

And yet, we individual humans, born into this wild mess, this end-stage capitalist nightmare of sorts, are actually not responsible for this entire system we were born into. Responsible, yes. Each one of us is responsible for the choices that we make, for navigating this world with intention and heart, to the best of our ability. For paying attention, and giving thanks, and being humble. We are responsible for these things. But so much harm has happened that is not in our individual ability to control. And it’s important to differentiate between the mess we were born into and our personal actions. For we are also responsible for stewarding our one precious life, we are also responsible for joy, and for choosing a life that gives us a chance to flourish.

Sometimes I think I have learned to believe that as a member of the human race, we the lost sons and daughters of creation, we the ones who have made themselves separate and so desperately alone, that I deserve a certain amount of suffering. That we deserve a certain amount of suffering. And perhaps that is true. Perhaps some of us have already received that suffering, and many of us, all of us, will most likely receive much more. And yet, the voice that told me, there is nothing wrong with you Marianna, did not lie. I am one human, consuming food and fossil fuels, the same as all the rest. American, we are the worst when it comes to consumption. I participate in a system and a lifestyle that I actually find utterly abhorrent, but I did not create this. And I am not inherently broken by my humanness.

There is a grief that lives in me that is so large. I frequently don’t know how to live in the presence of it. It is not only mine. For sure some of it is my personal bundle of sorrow and loss, but honestly, that seems small compared to the devastation I see all around me. It’s easy to slip into darkness. It’s easy to look at the carnage we humans create in our wake and feel my heart drop, waves of pain pass through my body… forgive us… we know not what we do. Or do we? If we know, truly know, it makes all of this a fuck of a lot worse.

And here is where it seems to get complicated. Human and beautiful, complex and aware, collectively and individually choosing a path of destruction, up against forces and systems so entrenched in extraction that we don’t know how to extract ourselves from their greedy clutching claws. All this is true, and still, I am not wrong. I am an animal. Born to love and play and fuck and eat as much good food as I can find. Born to mate and birth and howl and dance. I am the living body of the earth, the very earth I poison with the fumes coming out of my truck as I drive to work. Isn’t that a total mind fuck?

I also know myself well enough to know that if I let the despair grab onto my skirt hem and pull me under I will be of absolutely no use to anyone, least of all myself. And I believe to the very marrow of my bones that a profound piece of my work in loving the world is to find and experience joy. If I am lost in the waves of sorrow and guilt, joy is not close at hand. I believe that my ancestors, all of my people back and back, through deep time, to the very beginning have sacrificed, and paved the way for me to be here in my life. It is my duty to feel joy and pleasure, to share the incredible depth of wonder, passion, and excitement that I carry in my being with me into the world. How can I live in this paradox? How can I feel the true weight of my presence in the world, and the lightness and beauty of my body and spirit?

I hold this complexity in the palm of my hand. I rub it with my thumb, I turn it over and blow on it, I hold it under my tongue, I suck on it, and spit it out again, and still, I don’t know what to make of it. I know that I am not wrong, and I know that I have done wrong. I know that I love the earth and that I abuse the earth. I know that I love my sacred body and that I abuse my sacred body. Perhaps there are not supposed to be answers, perhaps my whole lifelong all I will do is find more and more questions. And weave joy into the sorrow. Weave song into the weeping. Weave human kindness into the harsh reality of human greed. To be awake to our own consequence in this life is a demanding undertaking. To understand the is and is not-ness requires my heart to grow large enough to encompass it all. Can I do it? I don’t know. But I am willing to try. To be broken open and gathered in again and again and again. My spirit is strong and for that I am grateful. My love is strong too, and I need that to survive. I need that to give away, I need that to make it another year, feeling with my fingers and my heart through the bleakness of these times. My spirit says take heart, my love. Look to the mountain, the moon, the sky. Don’t forget who you are and where you came from. You are the daughter of thousands, you are needed and you are not wrong.

She of the Snake

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We are one in this spiral dance ….image from a sight at Mesa Verde

This is a poem that birthed itself. The words beginning to spill from me, catching me off guard, without pen in hand. i’m beginning to be able to recognize this sensation more quickly, and quite literally run to get a writing instrument if there is not one in reach. Mary Oliver said that a writer should never be without a small pad of paper and a pen, I haven’t quite learned this lesson yet.

Snake has been growing in me for sometime now. I have never been afraid of snakes, in fact I’m enchanted by them, The cool smoothness of their bellies, their direct eye contact, the flick of a forked tongue tasting air, so beautiful to me. Yet this thing snake and I have going on, is really tied to the divine mother. Since I began in earnest last year reclaiming my relationship with Mary, now in a garment untied to any religion, and since finding a deep love of praying the rosary, snake has decided to show up in a big way.

Mary is often pictured with her foot upon the snake, some folks have said that she was squashing out evil, casting out the serpent, the temptress, the snake in the garden. I don’t believe this to be true. Yes, Mary has her foot resting on the snakes back, but perhaps more as a sign, A signature mark of her affiliation with the wild and wise serpent ones. Back and back through Time the snake has been a symbol of the goddess. And Mary is, with no doubt in my mind, a manifestation of the goddess. Not only is she the mother of God, she is God the mother. The fruit of her womb is life, and life is sacred. She rests her foot upon the snake with tenderness, and kind regard, a shared lineage of women and serpent, an ancient contract, steeped in magic and mystery.

When I was recently in the desert I was hoping so much to be visited by snake, I spoke aloud calling her, I drew her, as pictured here, courting her with my pen and my tongue. But she did not appear in her corporeal form, only in this poem, dropped into my heart whole and complete. Notice, I did not say that she did not arrive. Indeed she did arrive, hearing my calls and coming to me, gifting me with her presence through my own words. Sly like a snake she is…

What could it be that I have to learn from a snake? There is something about waiting, about not being too hot blooded, about taking the moment of opportunity when it arrives, without hesitation. Snap! Her jaws clamp shut, she does not wait for the perfect, precious moment, she needs to eat now. And all of life is death too. As I fall deeper into the practice of seeing nature as a mirror for my inner world, there is so much to be contemplated, and the thoughts that come into my mind and heart, the creatures I see with my eyes, the way I move through the wind and the rain, all become gifts meant entirely for me. I know how much I do not know, and how much I am willing to unlearn to be open to learning anew.

Blessed are we, creatures living on this earth and under the sun to be gifted teachers, teachers that come in all forms. Today I am giving thanks for snake, and all of her relations, and the gentle wisdom I am learning through contemplation of their ways.

Journal sketch to honor snake

The Voice of my Soul

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I have sat down three times in the last week, preparing to write a post about a journey that I took, both an outer journey in the form of a road trip, and an inner journey, diving deep into my soul and the lap of nature, through the ancient practice of vision fasting on the land. I sit down to write, and yet the words don’t seem to want to come. My attempts at coaxing them have been trying and I think I’m going to allow that experience to settle into my bones a little bit more before I share it here, though pieces of it may come forward sooner.

However, there is something coming forward to be spoken tonight, something unbidden and wild and terribly alive. Something that came clear to me on my time on the land, and made clearer over the last 24 hours. My body hums with something electric in nature, it’s not exactly excitement, it’s not exactly grief, I think it might be purpose. I think it might be my soul speaking. I think all of this time of wandering around and saying “what shall I do with my life?” It was right here in front of me. No, inside ME. Begging to be birthed into the world.

There’s a saying that goes something along the lines of “sometimes you need a story more than food to stay alive “

I agree with this, and I believe this. And what has been coming to me the last week is this deep knowing that what we need, much more than food, is ceremony. We are starving for a ceremony. Our children are starving, our families are starving, our schools and public organizations are starving, our souls, especially our souls are starving. And this is not something to be taken lightly, or turned away from, or seen as inconvenient, or that we just don’t have enough time. This I believe is deadly. We are starving for ceremony, and without it we are dying.

Yesterday my older brother called me when I was at work. He asked me if I was somewhere I could talk, he told me I might want to sit down. This is never good to hear. He told me he was going to tell me something that it was hard to hear, but he wanted me to hear from him. God, what a loving brother. He told me that a dear friend of ours had died the day before, that it looked as if he took his own life. These are the things we are never ready to hear, never ready to cope with, cope is a crap word, but you get the point. These are the types of wounds and sorrows that rip us open, that can fester for a long time,that call us reevaluate things in our lives.

My heart sank, like a cold stone settling down into my belly, the only thing I could say was “we loved him so much “and Matt said, “yeah, we loved him so much” and we wept together then, me sitting in my small office, and him at home, but both together in this grief.

This friend, this man that went down never to rise again, was a bright light of a human. Beloved by everyone, cherished, valued, believed in. He was gracious, hilarious, connected, and so very alive. The sorrow of his death is rippling out through our community like a boulder dropped in a small pond. The stories of love and care keep arising. My own memories keep surfacing and growing in form and texture. The vastness of the hole he leaves behind astounds me.

I’ve been thinking a lot about heartbreak lately. About love and grief and the way that they are twins of one another, the way they are inextricably woven, wedded. Like an infinity sign looping back on itself forever and ever, where one ends the next begins and so on and so forth.

I’ve been thinking about how to truly love is to be broken open. To be broken open again, and again allowing love and sorrow to rip through the very center of your being, and to not turn away. To keep your heart awake and aware, to keep your eyes turned to face whatever comes, to truly love is to lose. Is the fall, is to be broken. To love is to mourn, to regret, to weep. This may sound dark, that is not my intention. Nor is it to say that all of love is grief, of course this is not true, blessedly. But to be willing to stand in the fire of what love really means, requires a certain fortitude. A certain willingness to be with the trouble. To make one self large enough to hold suffering more enormous than you thought possible.

Let me now return to ceremony. In my four days and nights alone, fasting on the land, I came into the presence of myself that I had never known before. Deep healing happened and seeds of the future were planted. Both in my heart and in the land. I came away with an inarguable truth and knowing that my path in this life, and one of my offerings to this life, is the gift of ceremony. It seems so clear now, so simple, as if everything I’ve ever loved or longed for has been leading up to this, to step into the role of serving myself, and my community through offering healing ceremony, working in conjunction with the land, my guides and ancestors, the more than human realm, and the fully human realm.

It seems clear to me that ceremony is the key to bring us back into right relationship with all of life. And that this return to our place within the order of things is the balm for the broken-heartedness of our times. Wise, well, initiated adults are what are needed, to heal one another, to pull eachother out of the darkness, to know our purpose. When we are on purpose in this life, it is to precious to even consider throwing it away. We need a return to the tried and true ways of becoming human on the earth. And I am stepping in. I am stepping all in to service of life through the container of earth based ceremony. 

My soul has spoken, and I have heard her. Loud and clear, the direction has been given, and to turn away now would be futile. The thing about the soul is she makes you work for it, she doesn’t deliver a full packet of instructions, she speaks in image, glimpses, urges and feelings. What does it look like for me to make my life a living vessel for ceremony to grow and to wrap around me, and my community? I’m not exactly sure yet. But I am sure that this is the healing that I am being called to, but this is the healing that is really needed in the world right now, and that I can think of nothing more important to do with my life.

Thank you for being here, for reading my words, for being a human in the world at least for one more day. If you need support in creating or tending in the ceremonial realm, please reach out to me. If you need an officiant for a wedding or a funeral, please reach out to me. Those are areas I have already had some practice in. As I continue to listen to the voice of my soul, and this calling from within grows and becomes more solid in form, you’ll be hearing from me. What a beautiful gift it is to travel through life together, hold your loved ones close.

Remember, Life is sweet.

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And then I was 40…

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Well, it happened. I woke up yesterday morning and I was 40 years old. And I felt, exactly the same. Exactly the same as I have always felt completely and entirely, Marianna.There was no profound shift, no sense of increase in my adulthood status, my maturity, or my wisdom. Simply another day, alive and in my body.

I made my coffee, as I always do. And searched through the cupboards at the beach house I was renting to see if I could find something larger then an 8 ounce mug, as 8 ounces is terribly unsatisfying for me when it comes to coffee. I settled on a glass beer stein, and filled it full of dark strong liquid, and generous pour of organic cream. Settling down with my Journal and my pen, as I do almost every morning.

And as I sat there reflecting on my life, the soft sound of the waves on the beach in the distance, my own breath moving in and out of my body, gentle creaks of an old house shifting, and the felt sense of my daughter sleeping in the room downstairs, I was completely content.

As I began to write, reflecting on this shift in my age, and the things I wish to have happen this year, I had a realization. Every birthday since I have been a young teen, my birthday has been partially a celebration and also, the day of the year that I hatch my personal “fix Marianna” campaign. So, my birthday has become my own New Year’s Eve shitshow, where I make resolutions that I don’t keep, and look at all the things that are wrong with me and worry about how desperately I want to change but never seem to be able to.

I am always planning to be more dedicated, more focused, to do more writing, to exercise more, it’s exhausting even to think about it, it’s exhausting to write about it, and it certainly is exhausting to live it. I realized yesterday, and it sounds like a simple a-ha moment, but it felt like a lightning strike, that what I really want is to be less. Less of a perfectionist, less self-punishing, less of a people pleaser, less worry, less shame… The only thing I truly want more of is courage.

I have always loved the word courage, heart, to speak the truth of the heart. It seems in our current time of social media, and outward presentations taking the forefront, it takes special dedication and bravery to speak the truth of our hearts. To step out from behind the veil of “I’m OK and everything is great”, and to admit that we have pain, that we are suffering, that I am suffering. But this is what courage requires, it requires the truth.

Sometimes I doubt myself, no, scratch that I doubt myself all the time, well frequently anyway. I doubt that I am good enough, that I have anything original to say at all, that anyone wants to hear anything from me in this world full of scholars and eloquent beings, and artists, and people with college degrees. I doubt that there is a place for me in the world, in the world of humans anyway. I am quite certain of my place in the natural and more than human world. But the doubt is heavy, it hangs like a cloak and it colors all my days.

 I think this is deeply tied to perfectionism. To trying to be something other than what I simply am, and sometimes, what I am is a god damned mess. How does the dance between being and doing become so complex? How can I allow my complexity to be exactly what it is and as it is, and still move towards simplicity? Simplicity and purpose are where joy lives, I believe.

I have this recurring realization that it is only possible for things to be different when I am aware. Awareness, and allowing the light of awareness to shine into the dark crevices of my life, into the frightening and broken places, into the places I have purposefully cloaked in shadow. This is the way healing can happen, not by making birthday resolutions to become a better person. That whole “become a better person thing” reeks of bullshit to me.

This year, instead of making that birthday resolution list all of the things about myself that I want to change. I made a different kind of list entirely. I made a list of all the ways I want to be brave. And wouldn’t you know? Not really a surprise, to find out that most of the things that scare me involve deeply revealing myself and being brave and vulnerable in my body. I want to swim naked in the daylight, and learn to rollerblade again, and kiss a man who is not the man I was partnered with for the last 19 years…. Sounds fun, right? Fun and completely terrifying!

I have had a lot of magic in my life. I have had years a great growth, beauty, harmony, and community. I have had years of heartbreak, of loss, of my world falling apart around me. I have held in my hands the pieces of all I held dear, kissed them tenderly and set them down forever to step on to a new path of truth. I am not averse to challenge, I am not easily broken, but I am afraid. Yes, there is a lot of fear running in this system. But one thing I know is that I can learn new things. I can learn new ways of seeing and perceiving. And I can become more courageous.

So, here I go. Off into my 40th spin around the sun, with a small list of things I fear, written on a sheet of folded paper… Some actions seem small and some larger, but all of them I believe will lead me in the direction of true authenticity in myself. And who knows, I might just have a lot of fun along the way…

Making Home

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Spring has arrived. I can feel it in the air, a breath of sweetness in the breeze, and evenings stretching out for what feels like forever, but is really about 7:45. I love the turning times of the year, I love the newness and the freshness, the shift and the change. The way the whole world feels different, and all of life is aware of it. The birds are up and singing songs that sound somehow brighter and more excited, than their winter chirping. The rabbits are back, though not quite as many this year, I doubt that has anything to do with this particular spring and more to do with my mother’s new dog, scenting the yard with her canine smell.

 We humans are different as well, around here in northwest Oregon, it certainly isn’t warm enough to be showing any skin yet, and with our faces covered with masks, flirtation is a challenging undertaking. And yet, spring always brings more wayward glances from the opposite sex, lingering eye holds in the grocery store, and all the subtle ways of communicating that we humans have, to say “its spring…wanna get busy?” we can’t help it, let’s just blame our biology.

I have shared in my last two posts, a little bit about heartbreak, and healing, and the sense of surfacing into life again that is now surging through my veins. And spring is quickening this tempo in me. I have been at the garden again, and there’s something about that soil and filtered sunlight, the birdsong and the river going by that make me feel so terribly alive. In some ways it feels strange to have a fluttering of joy in my breast again, and a little bit of dance in my feet.

I’ve been living here at Bunny Hill Farm, for almost a year now. It seems hard to imagine that it’s been a whole year, and in some ways, it is only now truly starting to become my home. Not a stopping place, not a pause, but my home, my true home. I have been walking this land, praying under my prayer tree, singing to the moon and stepping into relationality with my beautiful home place, and I feel received. I feel stabilized, rooted, at rest.

Come late June, or early July my beautiful new little home will be going up. I’ve ordered a yurt cabin kit in a fetching wine-red color, with open interior beams, an opening five-foot dome center skylight, and five large glass windows. I am extremely excited to craft my home with my own hands, and of course with many other hands helping me as well. Also, I do realize I am stepping into a project that is far outside of my scope, and yet, there is something about this undertaking that feels entirely right. I trust completely in my process, in my ability to learn, in my desire for beauty and creation. Nesting is in fact one of my greatest joys, and as I build this home, I will be constructing an actual nest! I will be living in the round, a longtime dream of mine. No other animals live in square boxes…think about that for a moment, what are the implications of this? A worthy inquiry indeed, but I will save this for another day.

There is incredible grace in my life. My parents having received me back into their daily lives, after my being on my own for more than 20 years. Their extending of hearth and home and land to me is a gift beyond measure. Not only in that I get to build home here, right beside them. It’s so much more than that, we are, in our own small way creating community. Learning to live together, to communicate, to support each other, and to share our lives in a more interconnected and collaborative way then many families are blessed to do.

Life is so interesting, how it can deliver to us exactly what we wanted and longed for and dreamed of, and yet the circumstances wearing an entirely different face then the one of our imaginings. For so many years my dreams of living in the country, of being in community, and of engaging in shared purposeful work with people who I love centered around an imagined Oasis, owned entirely by me, and had a definite flavor of independence. Which I realize is somewhat in conflict with the concept of community, but fantasies don’t always make logical sense. The truth is that the concept of the rugged individual has crept into my psyche, even though I was raised in a community, and with strong community ethics in my blood from the get-go. So, life smiles at me, with her trickster energy, and says “here you go, community and connection and family, all you have to give up is everything you thought you knew.”

Did I think that at the end of my 39th year, I would be sharing space with my parents once again? Did I think that I would be divorced, and have sold my house, and uprooted, and then re-rooted once again? Most certainly not. But life had other plans for me. And if there is one thing I am learning, as I round the sun for the 39th time, it is that I don’t always know what is best. And I am certainly not the one in control. I am becoming a surfer, a life surfer, riding the waves and again and again climbing back onto the board in an attempt to catch a breath and a view.

I find myself sitting frequently and quietly, and simply thinking “what comes next?” I do not mean the new house, or the garden, it is a fuller, purer, wondering. It’s a wondering that fills my whole being, that tingles my toes and makes my heartbeat a little bit faster. I have a deep knowing that I cannot rush this question, it has to linger in my heart and my belly, it has to rest and grow and become a bigger and bigger question, until life decides to descend an answer. The near constant refrain that I hear inside is the most beautiful line, penned by our dear Mary Oliver “what will you do with your one wild and precious life?”

For now, I will show up. I will keep showing up. For myself, for my family, for the aching beauty of this land I occupy. For the wide wonder of this beauty soaked and trouble-filled world, and these times that I was born so perfectly for, even though sometimes I wonder why. For now, I will drink my tea, and write in my Journal, and study all manner of things that light up my mind and my heart. I will attend to the beauty of my days and my learnings, and I will keep the doors of my heart open, so that when the grace of knowing arrives, I will be ready to receive her.

  • Magic light dancing on the tall ones.
  • My hand on one of my tallest friends