Mid -Summer Musings: Lady in Waiting

(a fragment of author’s woodland path network… note the thin ribbon path in the center – the bears make these impossibly narrow path by walking in their own footsteps)

 

Yesterday at the Mid-Summer Turning I took a woodland walk in warm summer rain and then spent a quiet day at home. I visited with a few tadpoles and green frogs that inhabit my vernal pool, sat on the bridge and listened to the flow of water over stone at the waterfall, a place so dear to my heart. I also spent quiet time reflecting…

 

For too long I have been a woman in waiting… waiting for diagnoses for myself and my dog, waiting for direction – I need to make a decision about where I am supposed to live – waiting for intuitive nudges, waiting for calls from loved ones that don’t come, waiting for this dark cloud to lift, praying for the power of the spirit and body of the earth to fill this empty vessel that has become who I am.

 

Negative feelings overwhelm me. The political has become too personal. That I am in spiritual crisis is a given.

 

Too much waiting. Too much time spent in a collective future that appears too dark, too hopeless, too frightening, a future that seems to mirror my own life struggle. I do not sleep at night. I fight to inhabit my body because fear keeps me walking on air, obliterating my ability to experience somatized peace in any form.

 

Yesterday’s meander through my woodland paths (following in the footsteps of the bears), sitting by the water, clearing brush, smelling the sweet scent of pine, taking deep pleasure in the fact that enough rain has fallen to keep grasses, ferns and mosses deep green soothed me. I noted that acorns and beechnuts abound for the bears, graceful chokecherry sprays, grapevines, apples and crabapple branches are heavy with fruit. I really listened to the poignant songs of chickadees and mourning doves feeling deep pleasure. All these simple acts and occurrences earthed me…. I experienced deep summer as a gift.

 

I was grateful to be grateful.

 

I also re-membered… Embodying Nature as a “Lady in Waiting” I could give thanks for the first seed-pods, the abundance of fruits, herbs and flowers, the gifts of the harvest to come. I spent the day in the present and experienced deep abiding peace.

 

Grace.

 

A troubling conversation ended the day catapulting me back into the dismal future, resurrecting despair, negative thinking, hopelessness – once again I found myself living in a place I can no longer afford to inhabit for my own sanity…

 

Disturbed sleep did not obliterate the dream I had.

 

I am with Hope my little Chihuahua who is also my long dead dog Rinkie (who has since her death always acted as a Voice from the Beyond.) I watch Hope as she runs down towards an underground chamber or tunnel dug into the earth below ground level. I call out to her but she is disappearing into the tunnel and I am awash in fear…

 

Death is stalking me.

 

I don’t want to remember the dream but when I re –read my mid summer ritual this morning I see the words I have written: I am praying for the power of the spirit and body of the earth to fill this empty vessel I have become.

 

Perhaps my dogs are the guides I need.