My love stretches

“Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land.” Isaiah 5:8

Our obsessive need to build and to own is the very activity that creates loneliness and separation. As our cities grow and our boundaries are stretched we build our homes closer and closer, our fences containing the small piece of Earth we call ‘ours’. And despite this closeness we grow more and more separate. We can never be anything but lonely when we endeavour to own that which can never be ours. Chaining our lover to us will never make us feel more loved but only more alone in our desperate need for love.

I stand alone in the vast prairie of my God and my love stretches beyond where the eye can see, higher than the never-ending sky, deeper than the roots of the growing tree. In my aloneness with my God I am surrounded by multitudes, embraced in God’s vast space by mighty arms that warm me body and soul. I am connected and my web stretches around this Earth, weaving me to you. There are no fences that impede this growth and expansion of this web, no signpost that can restrain me from entering into what is my God’s domain.

Ramblings of a Crazy Woman

Are mine the ramblings of a crazy woman? Am I going down in a blaze of madness believing God speaks to me? When and if my words are ever read will the reader roll her eyes, will he smirk and snicker; will there be a shaking of the head in sympathy?

Yet in my heart of hearts I know God is alive and Nature thrives and that together they are fullness. I know that as sure as I can hear the call of the wren and the fall of the rain I can hear the voice of God speaking to me and the songs of Nature that are the choir.

It is only fear that has me question the stability of my sanity, for I live in a world and at a time that makes every effort to silence the Voice and attribute God’s wisdom to fools who clutch to riches and the puppets who dance as the fools pull their strings.

Who hears the wisdom on the wind and in the river? Who hears laughter in the croaking of the toad? Who can hear the sobbing of God in the mewl of the fading child?

To hear this great Voice while still clutching to trinkets causes madness. For one cannot reckon the fear of clutching with the freedom of God. These two lives cannot be lived in the same body.

And so it is those that have let go of the trinkets, have fallen and found soft Earth beneath them, been blanketed by the sky and sheltered by the trees that hear God’s voice. When the brave leave chaos behind and return to the wilds, when they bathe themselves in the waters of their Mother’s womb and are warmed by the fire of the sun, then are they made ready to hear the Voice which is at once enormous and silent. The body must be freed to embrace the simplicity of the Voice; otherwise the Voice is confused with the noise of the machinery of human chaos.

So fall. Fall and know the Earth is soft. Fall and trust your descent will be graceful. Fall from the grime we have manufactured and be received into the green living body of God.

I have fallen many times but it was only when I stopped clawing my way up again that I could rest. Resting allowed me to dream. Dreaming set free my soul. My soul embraced the living Earth and the enormity of God and then I could never leave.

In this time in our human history when our greatest institutions of learning produce marionettes for the trickster, when the art of the devout is locked in the cathedrals basement, when freedom is confined to democracy, then we must search for wisdom under the rock and under the bridges of our cities.

I will wholly trust this voice of God, this whispering Earth, and plunge eagerly to her yielding body.

The Wild Garden

Beauty is solely Divine Light and Divine Light is present in all of life. There is nothing that is without beauty, no one who is less than beautiful. Splendour radiates from the grandest and the smallest of creatures. Beauty shines from the rotting tree and from the blooming flower.

As we methodically destroy the natural beauty around us is it any wonder that we have produced such a narrow margin of what we endure as beautiful?

How can it be up to us to decide what is beautiful; is it not our task, instead, to discover the beauty present in everything around us?

A flower can be no more beautiful for our attempts to make the colour of its petals more vibrant. When we try to make the natural more beautiful we constrain the very thing we seek to expand upon. We don’t extinguish the Divine Light of beauty within, that is not possible. We do, however, throw a synthetic cloak over the splendour of this radiance. What we manufacture is not real and holds no truth.

We have constructed a society of falsehoods; replacing forests with skyscrapers, rivers with pipelines, mountains with roads. We place no value on beauty that we believe we cannot profit from. We do the same with our bodies; replacing breasts with silicone, muscles with implants, desire with medication.

The very things that make a woman beautiful; the silver lines on her belly that are testimony to the life she carried, the girth of her hips that sway erotically when she dances, the softness of her lap where you lay your head and slept – all these we replace, erase and shrink from.

What is it we fear?

Corporate culture fears that if we are not obsessing over various parts of our bodies, maintaining a weed-free lawn, driving a shinier car, we might turn our attention to the establishment and dismantle the machine.

However, Corporations could not exist if we weren’t willing participants in our own domination.

What is it we fear?

We fear our own authority and vulnerability. If we begin to see the beauty in all things, we begin to see the beauty within ourselves. With this INsight we become the true Master-piece. If I acknowledge the innate beauty in all my relations, then I acknowledge the beauty in you and we become – equal – each the authority of our own nature.

We join with all of nature; not separate, not distinct, vulnerable to the moods of this Earth and the seasons of our life. We come to understand that we need each other; must be at once the giver and the receiver, the healer and the wounded. We must surrender and have faith that there will be soft places and warm bodies to nurture us and we must be this for others.

Authority and vulnerability are fearless positions we place ourselves in so that we may thrive in the garden of our Spirit and be free, throwing off the manufactured cloak that seeks to snuff out our Divine Light. We come to remember the blessing of beauty and can no longer destroy that which we love, that which we exalt.

When we remember the Light of the Divine within us, we will know the miracle of our humanity. We will behold the growth of our forests, taste the purity of our waters, and respect the boundaries of our wild sisters and brothers.

We will clean up our own mess.

Such is this love

I went out into the rain; my arms and shoulders bare, no shoes on my feet. It poured down hard and cold, immediately my skin responded; a thousand shocked and tiny hairs bristled protectively.

Crouching on the lawn, I imagined I was a tiny creature; folded in upon myself, hunkered down on the forest floor patiently waiting for the downpour to ease.

Every natural instinct within me wanted to contract against the cold; constrict my body to its smallest form, shielding myself from the relentless rain.

Then slowly I began to focus on my breath; inhaling submission and exhaling acceptance. Relaxing each muscle; unclenching my hands, my belly, softening my jaw, I unfolded and my body blossomed into the wet and the cold.

I prayed, “Thank you for this rain. Thank you for this Earth. Thank you for this life.” over and over, water dripping from my eyelashes and trailing down my neck. I was filled with ecstasy; drunk with love for all Creation. And the activity of my ecstasy was still but for my swelling heart.

Succumbing to the rain I lifted my face in adoration, threw open my arms, exposed my naked soul to the tears running from my Divine Lovers eyes. Sacred vulnerability demands no rational thought. I heard my Lover laugh with joy that I should abandon all measure of sanity to receive this passion, and eagerly offer my body in return.

Such is this love.

The Shadow of God

Why should God be any less complex than we are? Why do we cling to foolish duality?

It is God who created the rock and placed it in our path so that we stumble. It is God who moves the clouds over the sun so that the light is blocked from us. The wolf that takes down your cattle is also a masterpiece of God.

We desperately seek to manoeuvre around the obstacles that trip us, bring darkness upon us and threaten our livelihood. In our scramble for safe ground we become the destruction we run from. When we try to climb a mountain without falling backward we rip from its roots the bush we grasp for to pull us onward one more step.

The bush weeps too as it dies and never realizes its fullness.

Just as God created the crystal clear waters that surge down the winding river, so too did God create the pool of stagnate mud in which your foot becomes mired.

All of creation is a blessing and always comes from love. It is us who divides creation into good and evil, worthy and unworthy, loved and hated. God is the totality, the fullness and the sum of what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch on this Earth, all that comes from and lives in Nature.

Yet we rush to the warmth and shrink from the cold.

We welcome the dog into our homes and slaughter the cow.

What is worthy and unworthy is judged in the mind, not in the heart. Worthiness is always what pleases us, as though we are simply baby birds in the nest, requiring our sustenance to be placed by Mother in our gaping mouths. But we will eventually starve if we resist taking flight.

I have found God in the darkness. I have found God in the shadows, in my shadow; the darkness of my soul. I have felt God’s touch in the pain from my scrapped knee and the sting of salt upon my wound.

Indeed God did not become real to me until I found God in my darkest nights. A God that awaits me in the light could not be conceived of in my heart because my heart also beat in my most wretched moments.

If I could still breathe while sobbing then God must also be there. The breath behind my song is the same breath behind my wailing. We do no justice to God when we assign God solely to that which brings us pleasure and causes us happiness.

I retreated into the closet of my bedroom, shut the door and lay on the tiny expanse of floor. I curled up into myself and hugged my knees to my body. I sought the safety of darkness and confinement and embraced the blackness within my heart.

All hurts and wrongs, all injury and assault, that had been done to me and that I had done to others, visited me there. They were relentless in their mockery and cruel in their accusations.

And for 100 nights I endured them, the closet both my haven and my prison, until they became familiar to me, less demonic and more tiresome. Then in my slumber another voice was heard, barely a whisper that my ears reached for.

The voice that came to me in the night had arms that embraced me and eyes that wept with mine and a heart brave enough to withstand my rage and misery.

This Divine Lover did not wait for me in the light, nor did my Lover shine a light for me to see. My God’s voice was carried on the stale air in the closet, my God’s arms the very blackness that enfolded me, and my God’s tears the sweat from my own brow.

I did not need to kneel and bow my head at an altar to honour this God, for it was honour enough to strip myself of all adornment and lay naked and exposed.

Had I died in that closet God would have held me while I did and then carried me heart and soul to paradise. Had I never seen the Sun my Lover would have wept with me all those long nights and into eternity.

This is the true miracle of God. The blessing of life is passionately embraced when we bow to the complexity of God and our own souls.

How magnificent it all becomes; the rock, the mud and the predator when we endure the closet, submit to darkness, not because we are brave but because we have not the strength to go on.

When we open to the cold that is also our Lovers breath and hearken to the lullaby that sings to us in the darkness then we truly embrace the complexity of our glorious Soul and discover within us the enormity of God.