Sacred Mountain, Sacred Snow, Sacred Light, Sacred Life
‘This is how I see my life,’ my friend … says, gesturing at the trees and parts of trees in front of us. Just ahead of our feet, off the side of the path, lie metre-long segments of a felled beech tree. Solid and lifeless, not yet decaying or on their way, yet possessed with an air of regency. Rising behind and around them are other beeches in their prime, releasing gold and brown leaves in great drifts with each gust of new wind. … ‘I have to carry both of these realities now,’ she explains. Ruth Allen, Weathering: How the earth’s deep wisdom can help us endure life’s storms
Although I’m in a different rhythm and flow this blog day, I began my morning as I do in winter and early spring when there’s still a chill in the house. Lighting a fire in the woodstove, gazing in with gratitude, then quiet, reflective time with a mug of warm liquid.
Today I realize that soon this part of my morning routine will shift. No fire to light and tend, my reflective time will be gazing into the woods greeting the sunlight, feeling gratitude for the sun’s warmth, for the beauty and sacred Life that is ‘the woods out back’. Today, as I often do, I bring with me a few current favorite books from the reading stack. I wonder what might catch my eye that will pull together or shed new light on the wild ride of observations, experiences, and reflections of this week past.
I think about what will rise to be shared, and I wonder if you too have experienced a roller coaster week.
Smiling, I return to the stack, finding Ruth Allen’s Weathering answers the call with Allen describing her elder, recently retired friend’s reflections as she observed both old life and new as they began a hike. Her description felt sacred to me and, as I reflected, the story deepens the sacredness I experience in these woods as I observe tiny pinon seedlings sprouting near older mature pines, as well as downed trees and branches, seemingly lifeless, some decaying, yet sacred still. When I take a closer look, these downed beings are teeming with Life, offering shelter and nutrition for a variety of other dwellers in these woods.
Allen beautifully shares her elder friend’s reflection of how she holds the ‘both and’, the newness and freshness of retirement along with whatever realities accompany her as she add years to her life. The beginning of Life and the waning of Life, perhaps not as death, but as preparedness for changing from one form of life to another system in the ongoing cycles of Life. Sacred holding that somehow reflects how I hold this chapter in my own life. Sacred holding as I observe the world, old dissolving, new emerging.
Sacred relationship that feels important to bring to awareness. Sacred awareness that invites us to examine our relationship to all that is.
I wonder in this time of chaos, turmoil, dissolution and destruction, polarization how we might invite the sacredness of what is into the activities of daily life? And, when we do each in our own way, how that might shift how we navigate and dance with this world?
How might it be if we embrace the sacredness of what is at the same time, we either protest or embrace it? How will it be when we restore our sacred connection with all Life and discover the common ground we share in the sacred?
Sacred Mountain, Sacred Melt, Sacred Life