Quail Springs: Reading and Being

Finally finishing up this Dark Mothers paper, and I was able to dive into some reading.  I know I know -- just be! But these old habits can't just leave lickity split you know?! I read some sweet lines in Desert Solitude about loneliness replaced by loveliness as well as "this is the most beautiful place on Earth." And, from Starhawk's Earthpath, a meditation on composting what you no longer need.  I guess in part I've turned to others' words this morning because I woke with such a start last night from a sad dream in which I was forgotten and deleted from a loved one's life.  Or, at least, that's how I'm reading it.  It seems strange really, for this to come up now, and I wonder what lesson I'm to learn.  This is an oppportunity, I tell myself, to welcome my emotions and to love myself.  And, although I hear Rumi whispering,

"Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instruments
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."


I still go to the study. This morning, I read some Denise Levertov again:

"That our loyalty to one another and our loyalty to our work
not be set in false conflict...

That our love for each other, if need be,
give way to absence. And the unkown.

That we endure absence, if need be,
without losing our love for each other.
Without closing our doors to the unkown."

Here's a fotografia or two of the yesterday's adventures: compost mixing, planting seeds, scattering the compost, and then dancing on it!