Pulling words + elements from SMS ‘Zine {No.1} into my own.*

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I feel barely {t}here.

And so I climb back into my body

my imperfect

my layers

my ground{ing}.

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Before the babies awake and need and before they fill my arms, I’m racing around in my mind. Trying to make myself slow and find words, trying to mind myself into stillness.

Mind your manners.

Mind your parents.

Mind your tongue.

These phrases just arose from my past, illuminating my disembodied childhood. They shamed and controlled me, kept me locked securely in my mind, away from my body.

Even now, I still shame myself and tell myself to mind my life. And yet, for all of my forcing and trying to mind, my body is the only thing that brings me back to center.

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Gypsy journalism has infiltrated my art journal. Secret Message Society ‘Zine Issue One is lying midst my tattered and my determined, my creativity and my coffee cups. Mandy {messycanvas.com} is firing up her press for Issue Two. Subscribe today. 

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There is a deep well of joy, a peaceful sigh and all is quiet. I allow this moment to pool around me. In this fullness I feel my whole self. The small girl of me is out tangled with the elements, the crisp morning air fills the lungs of my youth, and the quiet soothes this mama heart. The promise of early morning has always been my mother tongue.

I have grown and broken, time and again, in this holy space. It has forced and refined, sheltered and demanded. I am here, and yet I am scattered throughout the days, left for the birds to collect and take to the sky. My pieces do not need to be side by side. I can rest in the flowing, the lost, the no-more and the good-bye.

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He sits in a puddle of shade and sun, a lattice of light and leaf-prints adorning his head. Enraptured in the world just a breath away, wonder sings him to calm, to oblivion, to now.

I sit on the steps watching his moment, not taking a picture, not demanding it be concretized. I just say thank you, relax and start to breathe my own moment alongside his. I accept the fleeting and the forever of each day. I accept the undocumented life.

I want him to be filled with so many moments, more moments than he’ll ever need. I want him to never need a picture to feel the sun and shade of childhood, to feel the embrace of Mother Earth. My own childhood was filled to the brim, to overflowing with moments, most of which my parents never captured.

Oh, but I have them, they have collected in my bones and in my cells, making me certain that I exist, that I am woven into the Larger. May my own children sink into their forever-now and drink up all they need to make them certain of themselves.

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The Habit of Being provided the final piece of inspiration I needed to rest easy in the undocumented life, go and read Amanda’s thought-provoking words.

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Rumi believes there to be a field, a place beyond the ideas of wrong and rightdoing. He invites me there, to this free space, to this vast and endless Now.

I believe Now comes in many layers. Just as each breath opens, gives and dies, Now is constantly creating and recreating, is giving fully and dying completely.

Perhaps, Now is the mother of evolution, the dynamic existence that need not hold back, lessen, or fear any change, any unknown, any perfection or unperfection. 

Perhaps, Now continues to transform and reform itself, being but a mirror for my living.

As I strip away my mental constructs of wrongdoing and rightdoing, I open myself to the possibility, to the paradox, to the inclusive birthing ground for my contentment. 

I am the stubborn doubter and the one who sees the seed.

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**Mandy has a gift of seeing and layering deep upon deep. Find her here and request your very own Custom SecretMessage here.

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Curve of woman, held tight and pressed restricted.

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It has been a secret affair, because – when love comes wild** – the fluttering and flirt must be a dream. Freedom to love what I love is an outrageous concept. How can love flow? Mustn’t I earn it, deserve it, prove and be approved? Mustn’t I force my children to do the same, to hide and protect behind perfection? Acceptance and delight couldn’t possibly be – where is all the determination and damnation?

The water washes away my hate, and I peek through my lashes. I’ve given my matter over to the swirl of warm and I see them as they are, flesh and glory. Although I’ve thrown hate at them and declared them disgusting, even with all my fear of love-to-small housed in those curves, they’ve remained and given. They speak of a love that is steadfast and strong, of a love that doesn’t judge me or leave me alone. They are the very essence of support, regardless. They are beauty, come by way of love, and I am delighted.

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** Go and read Rain’s holy-speak :: it is catalyst and caress.

“Just as I am, without one plea…”

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And so we burn. And so we know, that we need not know.

The weary float by and find rest, combing the sand for nourishment, treasures given from Her watery deep. Dreams tangle with the ineffable Presence, hedging on the insane, promising nothing and offering everything.

And he is sublime.

And he is a wonder.

And all of me is running together, and then falling off into light. The deep, holy, black, blinding Source.

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“God{dess} is the inexplicable reality that can only be recognized and celebrated, but never analyzed and explained.”  Steve McSwain

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All of my dead, doing, dried-up weary has piled onto my head, built a nest and named itself guide. The congestion has turned to suffocation and I can’t handle the moment he walks down the stairs. His living parades my past failures and my future failures in front of me. I can’t see him for the trees.

I am smothered by the unbearable concept of my-being-mother. Mother: she who {always} knows, does, answers, corrects, prays, guides, provides, encourages, loves, knows, knows, knows, knows. Fuckit, all of this knowing.

I am soil, turned over and over. I am soil, returned. I am wore-out and you can see clear through me. I haven’t the energy to pretend or to hide my down-deep. This, is my forsaken.

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{my vulnerable :: my hope for light, for resurrection}

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“I cannot be born

on solid ground,

only where everything flows.

To enter my dawn

you must be unbound

from how the fixed world goes.”

Robert Moss

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I’ve been catching myself, out of the corner of my eye.

It is spectacular what can be held within the fleeting.

I am carving-out satisfaction from my:

this. this. this.

In particular, the bare, nothing-to-speak-of moments.

The flow of me is blurring beautifully around the pieces of my day-to-day.

How extraordinary to fill out our breath.

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Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.

Eckhart Tolle

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His breath and babble are weaving my days and nights into this earth. I am water and laughter, I am wind-blown, hair tangled, full of life and sea. I spread a blanket on the ground and nestle in next to my clambering needs. Love and constancy pull me down into the dirt and I am found.   

The other day, a friend sent me life-speak and laughter. She poured out her self, abandoned her ego, and laughed. Again and again, head down, healing poured through her, and light flowed. She knew herself, knew her Love, and spread it down the bed, across the mountains, and through the portal of sisterhood, into my lap.

And so we rejoice.

We are singing a new song and finding our old laughter upheld by much grief and giving. We are not old or young, we are timeless and tethered into Now. We are warriors and flower-children, twirling and spreading our light into these days that beg dark and call for reborn. We are unafraid and jump through our deepest fears, believing they are portals meant for our living. We celebrate the stripped-down and the return to our{true}selves.

We are singers and light-spreaders. We are undaunted by the dark. Come and fall into our lives and feel the pulse of living. We know the rhythms of surrender and laughter, of destruction and dance, of welcoming all and birthing much. We know that sometimes you must just sit in the sun, sip on some coffee, and watch your world fall to its pieces.

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image re-inked :: original here

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Risk is the way of the seed.

The seed must be planted in one place and must submit to what is. It does not look back and wonder if better was waiting. There is never better, there is only ever the soil of now. The seed knows this wisdom and dies into the eternal present.

Suffocation is the way of the seed.

Growth must begin with dying, with being pressed hard into the dark fertile Mother. She, who is the holy earth, composts from the nothing, into the everything.

Bursting is the way of the seed.

Containment is vital to the seed and then it is prohibitive to the seed. Containment is bliss until it is cruel; bursting is murder until it is relief.

Dark is the way of the seed, until Light is the way of the seed.

The seed carves out an existence by committing to the staggering weight and the impossible aloneness of the dark. Light waits until roots are formed, which anchor the seed in now; and then, then, the light will flood.

Dark and Light merge when the seed splits open.

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