Toward Common Ground

Wintering, the Wellspring

I know you called and said you were waiting for me to post something personal, not just someone else’s quotation, but something I’m thinking about, because it’s important to share…

I want to.  Every day I think about it.  I’m here waiting for it to shape itself into words.  Waiting for inspiration, for revelation, for the right way to say something  to tell the world that, never mind, all is well, all will be well, etc.

But , before I even attempt to use my precious store of words, I must note that lately, temporarily, I’ve fallen back into the old habits of the introvert, of the introspective mystic;  I’ve fallen back into my wordless way of being that helps me to right myself when I get out of balance.

That’s why you haven’t heard from me.  I’m in that state of waiting, that empty and open stage, a non-rational state of being that is, for me, from time to time, essential if I am to come back into balance, back into the possibility of being my true “Self.”  (And balance does come back, each time.  Like those little round-bottomed dolls from the 70’s, remember, whose slogan was  “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down,” who were automatically rebalancing?  I’m being a Weeble, then, rebalancing. )

You see, lately, I had been suffering from the chilling effects of paying too constant attention to the unending surface wave-on-wave of everyday challenges and tragedies and contradictions, my own and the world’s.

In so doing, in paying too much attention to the news, and the views, and the endless stream of words interpreting, expostulating, pronouncing, defining, announcing (in my head, on the airwaves, online, everywhere, tearing down, discouraging, disempowering)… well,  I had  not been giving enough of my attention to that other dimension,  to that  reality beyond words.

So, bear with me.  I want so much to say something wise and inspiring on these pages every day.  But, often, instead, I’m busy out watching the fog, the rain, the hawks, the tiniest sliver of green seedling emerging from the rich earth.  I’m busy humming to myself, or doing a little mindless twirl in the wind.  I’m aimless and pointless and as receptive to subtlety as I am to love, tenderness, kindness, simplicity, hope, and all those enlivening and strengthening currents of reality I had been ignoring.

Now, I once again begin to notice the subtle movements, as colorful and changeable and beautiful as the blending of watercolors, of my larger Self, the all-encompassing SELF, the Beloved Self…

Words, messages, posts, haven’t sprouted up yet.  But soon they will, soon this stage will shift into a zesty pushing upward of something essential demanding to be shaped, expressed, shared, given forth, and then the medium of words, my easiest release, will serve.

Meantime, just to let you know I’m still here, here is a memory of other words I once wrote.   Words I wrote after a visit to Earthsprings, before I lived here.  Words I remembered recently when a precious person told me of his powerful experience of tasting the sweet waters of the natural springs that seep forth endlessly on the land here, in this place where I have been wordlessly wintering:

Wellspring

soaking thick dark leaf mold,

seeping through soil that crumbles,

then slowly dissolves,

through humus, dark as a womb,

natural springs, canopied by fern,

wetness oozing up through layers

of rock and mineral beds,

drop by drop to stand at last

round stems of secret violets,

till puddle, overflow trickles outward,

single leaf afloat, slowly,

downhill always, from gurgling murmur

that signals the source, the source,

breaking through to service life

again with elemental bedrock

organic flow, my soul the soil

the cosmic wellspring softens

and gently soaks with the moist

waters of my holy source.

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