I want to be grounded in
earth, not circumstances. Even writing that sentence gives me a small lift – a tiny
euphoria that I have come to call “peace.”
The
shape of stories: circle and spiral. They lie down flat in the thick meadow grass
and are held, fed nurtured by the mercury moon. They become whispers that echo
back and reverberate forward through the times of all moons –
full…waxing…waning…new. They leave thick salt like pearls in our eyelashes,
sticking to the long tresses of our hair, after an ocean swim. Even in
chronology they are not linear. Our stories are present now. Abiding, not
static.
I
see the sunlight shimmering on the bright red stem of beet greens.
A
planet shines in the window in the middle of the night.
A loved one writes prayers by the glow of a pre-sunrise candlelight; this inspired me to add to coffee, incense and journaling a brightly glowing yellow candle. A small decadence. One I can afford. One that my soul craves.
The
moon had just risen up and was blurred by a thin layer of pink sunset clouds.
When
I let go of the future and its outcomes, settling into right now, I am freed
into a spaciousness that is unbounded. All possibility exists. All calm. All
potential.
The
light outside is surreal; it moves something within me: a memory with no
precise shape from my early childhood. Perhaps it was the lighting in a 3D
book, Hansel and Gretel leaving crumbs along a trail to a memory I cannot fully
summon. The feeling of awe from then, and for now, does not require effort.
In
the moment I am restored to wholeness.
Cold.
Chill. Darkness creeps slowly into lightness.
A
story is shared about a purple button: the only gift a man could give and which
he did with playfulness and sincerity, extracting from a little tin in his
pocket the precious reward for a coin toss game.
Reddish
maroon leaf buds jut out with brave potential from a dessicated trunk.
The
moonlight spills out of the sky, a liquid silver bath.
The
small fat vole wouldn’t cross the road but lingered in the path of my tires
while I waited, watched, didn’t hit him.
The
blessed heat of the sun colors my arms and face a shade of tranquility.
The
grace of something larger than life offers peace.
I
love this autumn place, the reaping of the harvest time in my life. The seeds
I’ve sown have sprouted and grown up and here I am: an early middle-aged woman
in this new place with new opportunities, in an autumn season. The time for
savory stews and warm baked items. It is not the blooming of spring within me
as I mistakenly journaled the other day. I can feel today that my inner landscape is moving through its own season
of autumn; the seeds were planted and tended and grew up in a long ago inner
landscape of springtime. But now the blaze of fiery color and all that has been
done in the past converge in the immediacy of this autumn moment; I can see and
extract the goodies, the harvest of all that. I am calmer. In acceptance. And
very, very grateful.
All blog images created and/or photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
