All week: reaching outward in moments as wide, expansive, and dry as Death Valley.
All week knowing the need to reach inward, to find the rocks that are the anchor, not the Stumblingoverones.
I tipped right off the edge. One toe hanging over too far on a muddy unstable ridge edge and I felt myself cascading into the fiery tornado. Trajectory not in my directional control.
Remembering the need to: do tasks, obligations, meetings; numbers and words in profusion.
Remembering the need to find the ease and spaciousness to show up for self, to ask where the discomforts are within and to offer them the respite of undivided, attentive listening.
The hot tongue of the fire lashed out and I stood my ground. Frozen in place, melting into a puddle of fire – scalding even at a distance. Intolerable-seeming in the center of hot iron brands. The lip of the fire curved inward. It paused, indicating an imminent change of direction; then it headed straight toward me. The fiery tornado – so rare – raged, tore, slashed its way through the landscape. A living dragon kite eating everything in its path. A scalding monster that I thought I – or she, or he - had put to bed. A vertical wave of destruction concentrated into the shape we call “funnel.” Tearing through a territory – force of nature. Of hell.
Hearing the words to others: Be kind to yourself, Honor the pain or ecstasy, Don’t give it all away to him or her or in service to the Workthatwaits, It can Waitalittlelonger.
Hearing the words from the inside out, feeling tears rise to the surface because gratitude and grace have come again, without any effort except that of noticing, of offering thanks.
Truly in awe.
What are these scribblings on the page? Vertical fires on horizontal paper. A pink ink pen inscribing dark fuchsia, maroon, the golden fear of flame too close.
Boundaries. A fence to guard against falling of the cliff.
Smiling, hair aflame, the color of Beauty except that I was tousled by the vortex and heavy winds. A flame, gentle, slowly pulsing, the fiery face of a candle.
Soothing. Healing. Rebalancing.
(Originally posted 5/9/14)
Soothing. Healing. Rebalancing.
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2018 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
