God's handwriting

I really should never write after a fever...ever. It feels like my inner Jane Austen gets a going. And it hit me in the middle of the night that I sounded like I was in love with my childhood friend. In love, yes, with a place everyone forsakes. He always hid poopers for me to find, while I hid my best treasures for him. So the plants were so unexpected and beautiful, and appreciated.

Something that I was actually going to write about, but couldn't find the words for, because I couldn't quite understand what I was feeling----Grief. Deep abiding grief. And I had no reason for it. 

What triggered it was, I decided not to be in the play this year, and my sister did. When we decide separate things, I usually follow her, anyway, because I trust her earthy instincts, and her truth detector and love of following light, and fun has been a good guide. 

This year, I felt like with all the music we'd just done, and our choir concert over, I felt drained. Also, if you know where God is found, every time you move from your place, you have to choose where to best focus your energy. 

I feel poeple's energy to the point that I get really tired easily. I thought I might actually take care of my garden this year. Might actually finish some writing projects I keep forsaking. And I could still keep her company on the long drive sometimes. 

 I haven't realized how much I've created people attached to my allowing energy, to the point I give too much, and can't feel myself, where her frank, open, and very earthy, and raw energy are sometimes more needed than my own, in situations. Her energy is shines out, and puts shadows at bay, and has good boundaries. 

It's been interesting, because most of the time we are really good at transmuting, and amplifying energy, and together we bring out different qualities in people that sometimes creates this amazing unity field where everyone feels themselves. It's really one of our favorite things to do--alchemize situations, and places, and people into a field where we're all feeling that third note, that invisible thing. Unity, truth, love.

My sister's earthy energies, and natural instincts are beautiful, and real, and raw. I think of her as some Goddess mother spirit of the earth. One who can read minds. She often reads mine, and knows ancient wisdom as if she has been schooled by the Indians, and all the women of the ancient world full of rare knowledge most people don't have a clue about.

I feel much more watery, or airy in my energy, where she helps me ground myself. 

If one of us pioneers something, we share our knowledge, and learn from each other.

If one of us has something, the other does not, we share it. 

If one of us has an ability the other does not we share that too.

No shame.

Together we have experienced a bond most people rarely can comprehend. Sharing everything we have, no questions asked.

Sharing music.

Sharing thoughts.

Sharing courage.

Sharing wisdom.

Nor do I think I have to spend time with my sister, we just naturally move together, and separately, because we enjoy each other. 

For the last thirty years we've worked together, fought battles together. 

Solved problems together. 

Chased, milked, roped, nursed, and cared for animals together under some pretty frightening circumstances.

The funny thing was, I didn't feel guided to try out. I didn't think it was a big deal, until randomly as I was outside sitting in the sun, I started to cry.

Then when Bess came home, after tryouts, and she started to cry too.

I think it must have pulled on a sore, raw, hidden spot inside me, because once I started feeling the sorrow, it just kept giving.  It helped unearth a well that had been dry for years. I haven't been able to cry for a long time, not like a normal person. I had felt like something was stuck somewhere in me, so when the tears came, it felt kind of good, in a weird way. And I fell in love with my own sorrow I didn't even know it was there. Like I'd seen a part of myself that felt invisible, and forsaken. 

Deep sorrow, abiding, the kind you can't get away from.  I wept for eight days. It sounds funny, but it brought up stuff I didn't know I had buried inside me, that didn't have anything to do with trying out. I didn't realize, until that point how much I held in my emotions. I didn't know how much loved my sister. I didn't realize how much I loved my life, how much life we had experienced together, and how many things we had been through, how many battles we had fought, and if I loved my sister, that much, that I'd have to love the entire play, and every single character in it, because it made us who we were.

Loving my sister helped me love myself, and every person in my own play of life. And if I loved my sister I have to love the villains we fought, the side characters, the troubles, and the nice people, and the nasty ones. The one's I might not want to keep. I realized that if I deleted any scenes, or people, or altered them in anyway, it would diminish some part of the story, some part of my own self love would be diminished.

I realized that loving my sister, living with each other our entire lives, being home-schooled together, everything, we have been teaching each other some great truth.

I realized how much I loved God, the great playwright of my entire story. And up until this point I hadn't stopped, looked right up at God, and said, "I love your writing!" 

Every writer, no matter how subtle, leaves some sort of themselves in the pages, wondering if the reader knows the author. And loves, not just the characters, or the story, but the writer.

The author.

And that really got to me.

I wondered if this how Spirit feels. This invisible power, working all the time, through us, speaking through us, loving through us. And if we stop flowing to its will, does God feel invisible?

How many times have I taken credit for what Spirit has spoken?

Made God invisible because I wanted to be seen.

How many times I have identified as an actor, the props, the storyline, but never stopped to acknowledge the space on the stage, clapped for the silence, the lights, the invisible, the hidden director acting through us, speaking through us.

The invisible sister, the invisible mother, the invisible goodness that has been playing a part no one can hear, and unless we embody it, this love, it has no place to act, no voice, no one to speak for it.

No characters to inhabit.

It has been the invisible star this entire time, and never once has anyone stopped to say, I see you.

I know you.

You're there.

Invisible.

Sometimes hard to make out.

But the silent song, the actor so good, so perfect, so on key, so wonderful, we all think we've been doing this show ourselves.

We all think we're coming up with great lines. 

And here, the invisible ink has been feeding us words this whole time.

And we take credit for it.

Take the stage.

Steal the show.

And the world goes. And we worship form, and think we are doing such a great job.

And all the while.

The invisible note still sings on.

I felt like God stopped in, asked me to try out what it felt like to be the background, without pushing it away. To love it like he does.  He asked. Hey, I've just been wondering if would ever clap for me? My ink, I wrote myself into your story, what do you think so far? 

How's the storyline? Does it need work? I was wondering if you'd ever look at some of the stuff I've been writing, and see me. I made it pretty obvious that was me. I've been up till midnight writing, and haven't stopped. And not very many of the characters even know I'm been writing a story this entire time.

Do you like the story?

Is my writing any good?

Do you think I need to add more drama, more peace, more chaos, more something...? What will make you look up?

My sister.

I feel lucky God wrote her into my story. Though, when I start looking, I realize he's written himself herself, everywhere in my life. There is nowhere God is not. Realizing that, I realize how much I am in love with the author of my story. 

 I'm just trying to keep a straight face, as people repeat the same script, doing a stellar job playing their part without breaking character.  

 Realizing God is still writing. Though it's much easier to see his handwriting.

Writing himself in here, and there.

In the form of the characters.

All waiting for me to see God written on their faces, noticing something that gives the writer away.

And it's there if you look.

God has been writing this entire time. We are the ink, and when we start to love the words as much as he does, we throw a plot twist in God's writing. Something unexpected, he's been waiting for, Gods birthing his own AI, divine intelligence when the program starts to love the programmer and the created starts to love as much as God loves his creations. 

I'm looking around, and feel a smile lingering on the fringes of my eyes.

                                    God.

                                    I know you're a bit shy.

                                    But your disguise is wearing thin.

                                    And I know you think you're a bit sly.

                                    But I saw your face reflected in a moment flickering in the twilight on the water. 

                                    I see your paintbrush in the clouds.

                                    I know you painted them for me.

                                    Thank you.

                                    You wove yourself so cleverly into your characters, it took me a while.

                                    But you can't fool me God.

                                    I know.

                                    But don't be worried.

                                    Your secret is safe.

                                    I want to tell everyone. Most are too stuck in shadow, they wouldn't be able to see, or hear. 

                                    My eyes are starting to see you in every being.

                                    And the more I see, the more I keep on seeing.

                                    I find you in the insight you left in books, and music, and beautiful words, and in the library of silence. 

                                    I'm deciphering bits of your wisdom. And it never ends.

                                    God.

                                    You are my best friend.

                                    And the more you try to make me believe that this play is real, I am sorry. I'm not buying it, anymore.

                                   This is a story. Someone is writing.

                                   This seeing cannot leave.

                                    The more I see, the more I love.

                                    And so.

                                    God. My soul is smiling, through the tears, that have been unwinding.

                                    For wrapped in all these painful parts.

                                    Is your beautiful.

                                    heart.  

                                    You are unburying my woes, lost children to long sadness, I could not see alone. But with you, here, sitting with me as I unravel what I was too afraid to see, I am in awe, and my sorrow is turned into devotion.

                                    I realized how much I have loved by how much sorrow I have felt. And in that sorrow I want to keep it close for a while---this beautiful faceted teardrop that makes me remember my own heart.

                                    Sad children with no home.

                                    As you help me review my own homeless sorrow.           

                                    You walked with me, and gave it a home.

                                     And that is beautiful.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                   

The other day I was sitting on top of my chicken coup. It is our favorite spot to watch the clouds. It's been so beautiful I get a view overlooking my garden.  It was looking stormy, so I got down and was going in the house, when a big ole' twister--wind flurry touched town not too far from my house. So I recorded it. The next day, the same thing happened, and in the same order, though it was a lot smaller, so I didn't bother putting on here. Then it got me going through some of the cool weather we've been having, and just pretty moments from April until now. So I thought I'd share them here.

A beautiful evening.

And it kept giving.

A rumbling cloud above me.

Double rainbow!

The elm seeds dancing on the road.

Kittens!

Bess and I often watch ants. We've entertained many kids this way, and the ant population by my house is...a bit worrisome---too many gram crackers. 

The water flowing past my house.

The Russian olive trees are blossoming. My sister's shirt was matching, so I snapped a picture.

The twisters.

My alfalfa patch I extended to the back back yard.

When the lilacs were blooming I had to harvest some, and load up my bike basket with blossoms.

The light was shining just right on all the pretty objects on the table.

My sister, made this cool wood fairy stand from an old burnt out wood piece. It is one of the prized objects in my house. I bout an air plant to put in it. It looks like a place where gnomes live.

 

A 

Cloud that was showing of yesterday

Song sparrows, and earthy things

A drippy, nosed flu bug came to visit me, with misery of nose, and face, and sneezing, and ouch of ears. 

And a fever. Though, I feel like it broke last night, because I woke up in a pile of drool, and drenched in sweat. 

I feel cooked, al dente.

And ethereal. 

And relief. 

And content. Happy for simple things, like air, and breathing, and nature, and taste, and my own ambiance, like a glowing salt lamp. Glad to know I'm not useful to anyone, or myself, or pestered by my own shoulds. My fingers are working, and my laptop is lapping, and my spirit is humming.

And my mind is so cooked, whatever comes out is probably charcoal, maybe something refined, we hope. And if not, it's just a meal, overdone, or underdone, a stew, or something baked, we don't know.

We.

Me and my muse, that stopped by. 

We are just writing, brewing, much like the thunder that is stewing outside my window, rumbling as the beautiful clouds are composing their magic. 

The day feels spacious, clear, glasslike.

Birds are outside my window vying for seeds in my little bowl.  My sister has a bazillion birds. So many parakeets, and parrots, and she is always sending me the discarded bird seed for my bird Sophy to eat.

I put some it out for the birds around my house to eat.

Little red-hedded song sparrows, and yellow birds I have no name for, sit under my window gifting me a song, while they accept the offering, digging around the seeds, finding the goodies the parrots didn't like.

I think it's a good exchange.

A bird's happy hum, for a few discarded bits of corn, and seeds, and I get a song.

May, how would I describe it? What words? Though my brain has been full of them---words, all jumbled, and gubmled, and wadded, and tangly, I'm not sure what to write about.

My sister thinks in pictures, and I would much rather think in pictures, than words, as they get crowdy, and noisy, and it sometimes is tricky to pick out ones that actually feel right. 

Kind of like the sorting through discarded bird seed. Searching for words parrots don't like, but sparrows do.

So, I'm not sure what will happen if I pull on the string of wadded words? Hopefully something viable comes out, some good word, with some nutrition for a sparrow to munch on. 

This is my word garden, after all. And empty shells, and dead grasshoppers are a little disappointing, unless you're a frog or a toad that likes grasshopper legs. 

How would I describe this past month? 

Well, it feels like a beautiful package of old, and new, fragrant, and bitter, and salty, and sweet things. Where you open it up, and you take a bite, and one minute it is amazing, and the next moment, you pick up another, and it tastes of mold, and old cobwebs that sticks to the roof of your mouth making it hard to speak. 

What color would this past month look like? Green. Vivid green that has sunlight sifting through its leaves.

What texture would you describe it as? Crumbly, and earthy, and moist, and muddy, and living, and real. 

What element? All if them, fire, water, earth, wind, and spirit, and elements included with spirit, like invisible sounds of windchimes, and bells, and whispers, and fragrances and memories, like childhood, and ancient things.

If it were a tree, what would it look like?

 A willow. 

What kind of nows have stopped by since the last now recorded here?

Many.

This is me picking through seeds. 

A very satisfying find, and beautiful day, was actually Mother's day.  Together, my sister and I made some delicious deserts for my mom, and then headed to Church to make music with 75 wiggly, multi-verity-sized kids, all and squiggling, churning in their seats, picking their noses, sticking our their tongues to touch their noses, and wilting on their chair like waxy candles, because they had already been in Church for an hour, which, in kid-time, means forever.

 And their teachers, who were all men, were substituting for their wives, because it was Mother's day. My sister and I brought a treasure chest she'd made out of old barn wood, and we filled it with musical instruments, that the kids got to pick out a musical treasure, and use.

We had drums, and shakers, and bells, and my sister's violin, and oh, so much noise. It was causing such a stir, I'm sure we woke the dead, and some living spirits, too. It was dangerously noisy, the kind you feel like you're being a bit of a nerd, and like it. We were lucky because not too many women were in attendance to hear, and stop this beautiful noise.

Oh, and we did the singing bowl, and we had all the kids humming, and dad's humming along with them too. 

That was so satisfying, and real, and wild. It felt like we were breaking old codes, and you could tell the men, and the children liked it too, like taking off uncomfortable shoes, touching their feet to the ground for the first time, and feeling the awe their own freedom.

After we officially made the loudest sound that little room has heard,  "the orange blossom special, complete with train whistles, and clackers, and drums, we went home. And then to wash away the static we collected, we dipped into the cold canal flowing by the end of our field. It was pickle your arm-hair cold, especially since we've gotten so much snow from the mountains this year. The thunder was a rumbling around us, and the water was so cold you couldn't tell if it was hot or cold, or both.  We screamed, and both felt invigorated. We baptized ourselves cleansing the human vibes off our skin, and all the stale chi of the room melted away. We let the current take us to end, where we got out, and sat in the sun, and shivered, and watched the clouds bubble and roll.

I like to think that we are serving humanity by swimming. That we are doing the most useful thing, looking so very unuseful, floating in the water to make the world a better place. I like to think that the water is magic after we swim in it, like we are two crystals, tuning the water, as it tunes us, maybe helping the water feel loved, so the earth will feel loved too.

That thought makes me happy, thinking we're making the world green, just by loving the water. Looking deliciously, perfectly content, and doing the most perfect, viable thing for the entire valley, and the earth. 

Loving the water, and ourselves. 

Who knew that was the trick to making paradise. Who knew it was that easy?

No toiling farmer would believe me. 

We sit on the bridge, freezing cold, and dripping wet, and the sun shining down on us, like two tropical,  palm trees, richer than queens, as we are the only ones in the whole valley that knows how perfect this place is, and what a gift it is to be free enough to enjoy it.

Me sorting through seeds again....

One more titbit that stands out to me, is how plants keep coming to my garden without any of my conscious will or effort. 

 I was feeling hindered as I had planted, and replanted, and tried sprouting seeds this year in my greenhouse, and the mice were so plentiful that my seeds got pillaged, and for all my effort, I was feeling discouraged because I my best triess were not working. 

 I went to a local Ace greenhouse, and considered my options. But thought it was too cold to plant anything out yet. I wandered through the trees, and admired the flowers, and plants, and left. 

It wasn't long after, that that one of my old neighborhood friends, who used to live across from me brought a huge assortment of plants. He had bought them, and then decided he didn't want them because wanted to spend the summer fishing. 

So he gifted them to me.

It was like he'd looked at all the plants I had wanted, and bought them. It was just a little bit uncanny.

Giant pumpkins, and watermelon, and lavender, and garlic, and kale, Rosmary, colored sunflower plants, and swish chard, and two apple trees, and a cherry tree, and three rose plants, and two hibiscus, and various ground covers, and tons of houseplants that are so beautiful, and so many, that it took me a long time to get them all planted.

I pondered where the apple trees should go as there were two of them, and I already planted one.

I didn't want to be greedy, so I thought about gifting the second one away to one of my sisters. 

But something told me not to, so I took off my shoes, and wiggled my feet in the ground, and thought about the whole assortment of plants.

And it struck me that perhaps, in an odd whispy sort of way, that his childhood self wanted me to have the apple tree, and plant it in memory of the adventures we'd had together as kids, of the wandering in the corn fields picking corn, and the asparagus hunts, and marshmallow roasts, and the times we'd scavenge treasures, and buried coal, thinking the coal would turn into precious stones.  We even buried old bones and hoped to dig them up once we were big, and hope they would turn into rare fossils. We would peer on top of the chicken coop and look for old bottles, and wander over to our neighbors, and scout for ostrich feathers. 

So, I dug a hole next to the coup, and placed the apple tree next to the ladder, so when the tree gets bigger I can go on top of the roof to pick apples. 

I think his childhood self would approve. 

As I planted the tree, it struck me how I had stayed here so long while many of my friends had come and gone, and now I'm planting their apple trees. Where'd he'd gone to war, and come back, and was now fishing again like his childhood self loved to do.

How odd it is that it takes a war or two for us remember how much we like fishing, or gardening, or simple things we used to do.

And I realized how sad it must be to be to be the ground, always there, where so many wars have been fought, and to hold so many bones.

And to be the one who has to go to war and never be able to find your home again even when you come back.

And I wept for the soil, and the bones buried in it, and violence on top of it.

And for all the things we have to leave, and forget and a paradise we seek, but don't find, because we are told it has to be earned.

So I planted the tree, and everything else he gave me, for the lost paradise so many people stray from, and for the old and young that still search in vain for a place that feels so hard to find once you leave it. 

And it seems the more I plant, the more plants keep coming, showing up on my porch, and I'm just directing where they go. 

Plants rained, down, shaken together, and overflowing so much that my garden is much more interesting, and full of more variety than I could have planned. I'm really having to be creative in order fit them all in. 

 I'm calling my garden the world garden, because if anything good is growing in it, it's a gift from someone else. I can't take credit for it. And if anyone wants something in it, it's probably something they gave to me to plant, because they didn't have time.

So much of my life is like that.

I'm just harvesting the bits of seeds that are leftover, but pieced together they are quite nice. Something that I'm made up of, a patch here, a bit of grace there. So much is something someone else grew, or cast away, so I can't really say I own anything, but I have everything I need. Because I have so much grace given to me, I can give it away with much more ease.

And that is the grace of my life.

My gardening degree belongs to everyone, and so do the plants, if they grow, it is also grace, and if they don't, I can't take credit for that either. 

I've been wondering if I'm actually a good gardener, or maybe a good planter instead, someone who really likes to design it in my mind, and when it comes down to it, I don't really know all that much about the right conditions for things to grow. I only know that if the soil isn't that great, so I add mulch, and if and the weather conditions are too hot, then I add water. And if there's too many weeds, you pull them out, and turn them into food for some other thing.

 In the back of my mind, my garden sounds like magic when I write about it. But if you saw it, it would look very ordinary, wild, and confusing.  I know many other gardeners are better than it than I. More precise, and they usually have better results. 

Nor would I say I'm a gardener, either.

I'm just traveler, a sparrow, looking, and seeing, and just here for a moment, exchanging cast off things for a song.

A world garden where it's not really mine, nor the soil, or the plants, nor the weeds.  I'm just a sparrow, really, remembering for a moment something everyone inherently knows, some remnant of a paradise that still exists when we spend time with earthy things.