It's a strange moment to be alive in this world. It seems as though there are many parallel realities soaked into each other and unfurling themselves in the same space. There is an extraordinary madness and an extraordinary magic all coming to their greatest fruition simultaneously. Beauty and violence at a fever pitch in their ongoing dance. Savage. And profound.
It tears at my seams such that sometimes I feel as if I am becoming creation itself, others as if I am being torn apart. Do you relate?
This much I know: Beauty feeds the Soul. So I settle my heart and consciousness into beauty's hands and listen: how do I bring a life-affirming beauty into the world right now? What is needed of me? How can I serve?
I go to the company of wild beloveds in tame places and the girth of old trees left to live out their natural time in the midst of the city that has arisen all around them and set to eating the rest of their world for its own imperatives. How blessed they are to have escaped the rapacious saws that tore through this land with vigor and determination: how blessed we are to have their solid mass there to lean against, take shelter in, breathe into, press our faces to and inhale the scent of.
Salvation.
I know not the years that that gigantic sequoiah has stood there, quietly enduring the devastation of her home and then the imposition of the delusion of society in its place, but I know that she has seen it all and will see yet more before she lays down at last, quiet and contented on the earth that has held her aloft for so long, and perhaps glad to rest. I know that she is love and beauty embodied in wood and frond, and I lean into the red and brown of her bark between the swaths of deep green moss and listen for her council.
Mother... I am here: bless me with your wisdom.
"Stay close to me. See there the ice-burned leaves of the bushes that will weather the terrain of the year brown and ravaged by that strange storm? Bedraggled as they are, they will make their flowers, make their seeds, feed the birds, welcome the pollinators, and live as well as they can given the pressures of the now. A teaching for you. See those buds browned on the branch? They too will do as well as they can with the savagery of it all, inexorably progressing towards their own destiny come what may, and BE-ing beauty as is their nature. As will all the wild things. As could you. For yes, beauty can be covered, but it is indomitable, and will never be diminished. Beauty feeds the Soul, and beauty prevails. It will never be overcome. The dance will go on. Grieve, but do not despair. Love. Love with the whole of your being. Stay close to me, stretch your roots down deep, spread your crown out wide, be flexible, and also be strong. Love this wild earth, listen deeply, honor fully, and stay in the journey as gracefully as you can. Always love. Be a home and a nourishment for others while you tend your own roots and make your own seeds, and be Beauty itself just by being your Self. And always, always live and grow according to your own design and no other."
I lay there against her for a long time, listening to the strange symphony of the human endeavor buzz and clatter, laugh and howl all around us, a peace flowing into my blood. My belly softened against her body. A strength was given me in her embrace. There was a solace that lingers these many hours later, still giving. Still holding me. Still guiding. Still showing the way.
It's no small feat to weather the storm of the now, but if we cleave to beauty in the most life-giving way we know how to, if we let Beauty feed our Souls and pour beauty into the world in response to that holy feasting, then this storm can be a mighty initiation into the deepest realms of our magnificence as true Beings in the wild story of the world.
So mote it be, my friends.... So mote it be.
M
