void-of-course (moon lessons)

~At the edge of my awareness, I am alert to all that is around me. Eagle has made a home here and every day I hope to catch a glimpse of his wide wings embracing the sky. 

~Running in the park, I come upon a herd of deer. I quickly pause as they pause. We regard each other ... "Hello sisters" I like to say. One seems to nod before bounding off to join the others. I linger, watching for her to take a final glance back at me. Yes, I am here, just as you are.

~Rainy weather means I will find my favorite "Old Man" horse inside at the stables. At 28 he is the senior of the herd. I stand by his stall, one hand on his shoulder, the other held palm facing up towards his muzzle. I send him reiki but really he sends it to me. I watch his eyes soften, his breath deepen, feeling the warmth on my hand, feeling his dreams wash through my body. Green pastures, sunshine, rolling with ease and freedom. I feel him slowly ceding his memories with grace and celebration. It is a gift, this time with him. I quietly sing to him "Old man take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you were ..."

~We head out on a Friday afternoon driving west, arriving in time to watch the Sandhill cranes returning to roost overnight at the Platte River. Every Spring they spend a month here fattening up for the journey northwards, heading to Canada, Alaska and even Siberia. Under the cover of a rapidly descending darkness they fly in. We can barely see them, but we can HEAR them. 





These are the many threads jumbled together in my heart and in my life. I am on a bit of a wild, internal ride - remember Mr. Toad and Wind in the Willows?

Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing ...  

Through a route too difficult to fully explain here (it requires a full pot of tea, an afternoon outside of time and a comfortable seat to relax into) I have been examining and considering my own rhythms and cycles through study of the Moon's. Cultivating a Moon Practice has been a source of immense insight, grounding, and inspiration for me. What has bubbled up as a result of charting my days and studying the energies involved in La Luna's monthly travels is a deeper understanding of my own relationship to these rhythms and energies. What hit me today was understanding how the moon moves through transitions - something I do not manage gracefully or with much ease. That I am wobbling through IMMENSE transitions had not really sunk in until I had it reflected back to me through La Luna's example.

Menopause, the death of my mother, my daughter's transition into puberty - hello?! Transition overload!  Making this all the more intense has been my own impatience with myself. Why can't I figure out what it is I want to be doing with myself? Why can't I settle upon one course of action? Why am I so distractible? How is it months go by and I cannot account for myself, my actions? I realize I am judging my life through the lens of a mindset that is useful when the energy of the season supports growth and development. But in the flux of transition - the letting go in order to open to receive - this kind of thinking (productivity, accountability, results, action) only makes matters more intense given the vulnerability inherent in change or transformation. 

Our culture is seriously lacking when it comes to celebrating change and transitions. And especially so when it comes to women's lives.  To talk about menopause publicly elicits uncomfortable laughter and a quick changing of the subject. I am grateful to the woman I met years ago who shared with me her experience of "hot flashes" as power surges. She described what felt like an umbilical cord of vibrant, alive energy reconnecting her to the Universe. The intensity of the internal heat an indicator of energy awakening her to a new potential in her life. 

Give me a dose of that please. 

The period of time when the moon is void-of-course is when she is shifting from the energies of one planet to another. There is - as this site shares - "a pause in the end of the story." How do I manage endings? I tend to linger, to hold on. As much as I love new beginnings, shifting gears is not a fluid habit for me. I am learning. But it requires mindfulness, patience and care. As I release what was - my life as a daughter, as a in-theory-fertile woman and mother - I am rewiring myself to my world. Creating and laying down new relationships and understanding myself as a daughter of earth and moon. Previously my understanding could be labeled as "solar" - me at the center of my life. But now it is understanding the whole within me and my place within the Whole. Relationship, partnership, community ... it is a lot to digest and I need to allow it - and myself - all the space and time it needs. 

 

exploring

Wow. It's been awhile.

I suppose I am a victim of the season ... this betwixt  and between time ... not yet Spring yet clearly no longer Winter. It has me all tangled up inside. I awake to hear the raucous sounds of randy robins mingled with the clatter of shovels, spades and boomboxes as armies of landscapers descend upon my neighbor's yard to ready it for a new season. (My neighbor owns his own landscaping company, so there is a continual stream of his employees prepping and primping his yard. This is not the case in our wild landscape.) I sip my morning coffee and plan my day which is quickly sabotaged by my spring fever. There is just too much productivity happening around me and I must escape.

I've been hitting the trails of the neighboring park. For eight years I have lived near this recreation center and managed to overlook it. Way back in the early days, Cowgirl and I would pack a backpack with sketch books and snacks and walk a half mile or so to a bench to sit and draw. I admit a snobbery and insensitivity to the landscape of my home. Dried grasses,milkweed, and scraggly mulberry trees did not capture my imagination. Wildlife appeared to be limited to Canada Geese, seagulls and wooly caterpillars.  

Of course it was not the landscape that suffered from lack of imagination, but this viewer.  Thankfully Nature has been patiently going about her business, unbothered by my lack of enthusiasm. (Seems like a good model for me to follow as Cowgirl enters into the preteen Eye Rolling and Deep-Sighing-from annoyance and/or boredom stage of development.) And thankfully, the writing and influence of this teacher has inspired me to take a longer and more studied look into the spaces and places I now embrace as home. 

It is only recently that I've made the conscious attempt to consider and refer to this place as home. 

"Later I would look back at my time with the cedar trees and say I was visited by the mythical crone - the old woman of the crossroads who allows travelers to ask her one question, which she is bound by the laws of nature to answer in truth. My question might well have been: where do I belong? And her answer, with a gesture to the wild forests, sprawling meadows and dark waters of the earth, would have been: here." 

-Eila Carrico, The Other Side of the River: Stories of Women, Water, and the World  

I feel the pull to venture out. I pack my backpack with camera, binoculars, and bird guide.  I tuck inside my journal, pencils and pens. Fill my water bottle and strike out. Each ramble I discover more and more. I hold in my hand the map of the Arboretum tour with the hope of familiarizing myself with the over 90 different tree and shrubs lining the trails. I have found a tuft of a fox's tail, the shedding coat of some deer, feathers, seeds - signs of life vaster than I had realized. 

Porcupine have been feasting on the tender flesh of young shrubs. A corridor of trees hosts Downy Woodpeckers late in the day while the  Black Capped Chickadees have an earlier commute. I have been seeing a Bald Eagle and now know it has a nest safety tucked away in one of the park's larger sycamore trees. 

"Maureen Murdock, author of The Heroine's Journey, says that women find their way back to themselves differently than men do. Men move up and out into the lights of the world, but women's challenge is to move down into the depths of their own ground of being."

-Eila Carrico, The Other Side of the River 

I am drawn to exploring this patch of world around me because I believe it holds a key to understanding myself. For too long I have felt unrooted, out of place, free-floating through my life like a dandelion seed blasted by the wind across my lawn. To understand myself, I believe I must discover my relationship to this place. Or more accurately, uncover where and how I belong in the web of being. What is my place among the Ponderosa Pines, the Mulberries, the Geese, the rabbits and the coyotes? 

I want to understand how the rhythms of Nature move through me. I am taking part in a new and exciting offering: The Lunar Womb. I am following the moon's rhythms and charting my own. I am examining the dance between the Moon, Sun and Earth and learning how those energies play out within and around me.  

It is immersion into my self and my days which takes me out of modern time. I come here and it seems as if lifetimes have been lived out in 24 hours. I cannot operate within the rhythms of social media and am accepting that now is a period when I orbit far away from connections that once were regular and daily. I know things will shift and so I surrender myself to this new way of being ... I want to see where it takes me. Deeper within, I hope.  

 

I have every intention of regularly reporting back here. But just in case, I am trying to leave a breadcrumb trail.  

celebrations

Today my girl turned eleven.

Eleven?!  How did this happen?!

I got up early this morning so I could steam dumplings for her breakfast. Yeah, I know. This is how I roll. The Husband groans at my celebrating antics.  He is the eldest of four, his mother having all her babies before she was thirty. Birthdays are not a big deal for him whereas I, on the other hand, was like an only child my brother being 9 years older than me. The Husband says my mother spoiled me and I used to get defensive about it, but now I say if showering someone with love and attention is to spoil, then spoil away!

So while Cowgirl is at school, I've been hiding her birthday presents around the house. She requested a scavenger hunt for her gifts and as I am still working on completing one, I am grateful for the extra few hours. Later in the day, I went to write up the clues when I drew a complete blank on where I hid her big gift! I mean for a good five minutes I could not remember where I stashed the-one-gift-she-really-really-really wanted!

It was both hilarious and horrible. A menopausal mommy moment of utter terror and angst.

So I walked around the house, retracing my mental dialogue (yes, I could remember the spots I chose not to use ... inside the grandfather clock ... in a desk drawer ...) until finally I stumbled upon it!

I got to take a break to go buy her a sub sandwich for lunch and then bring it to her at school. I love sitting with her classmates in the lunchroom and seeing her in her element. She sits with the boys and one new friend peppered me with questions. "Are you both from China?" I explained I was born in New Jersey and isn't that equally exotic? He then deemed it "cool" that Cowgirl got to live in China first.  

It is hard to remember those years waiting for Cowgirl, wondering about the child living in China who would one day be my daughter. Eleven years ago I stood outside under a full harvest moon and offered up my prayer for a healthy child. At that time, I had no idea we would be adopting. 

Eleven years ago, just two days before that same full moon, Cowgirl was born. In China the eight full moon of the lunar year - our Harvest Moon -  is known as the MId-Autumn Moon Festival or 中秋節 Zhong Qiu Jie. It is the second most important holiday and traditionally a time for family reunions and celebrations. It is said that under the full moon, we are reunited with all of our loved ones as the moon shines down upon us all.

In our family we talk about the Moon Goddess, 嫦娥  Chang-e, who brought us together as a family.  I tell Cowgirl that she was the one reaching out to me under that full moon all those years ago. As we celebrate her 11th birthday, this year we will celebrate the Moon festival just a few days later. We have moon cakes - 月饼 yue bing - which we've already tucked into. Cowgirl and I like the red bean or lotus paste ones; the traditional cakes have a hard boiled egg inside which we don't like; the Husband shuns them all!  

We combine these traditions from her birth country with new traditions of our own. This morning she chose to wear her Chinese Camp tee shirt. It could have easily been her beloved Kansas Jayhawk tee. She doesn't like cake, so I bake her a birthday pie. This year she wants a strawberry refrigerator pie.  She has also requested steak for her birthday dinner. Last year, it was sushi. That is how she rolls ...

So yes, I will spoil her on this, Her Day which actually is not all that different from other days. With the exception of me getting up early for the dumplings. 

I wouldn't have it any other way. For she has given me so much more than I could have ever imagined 11 years ago under that full moon. She is my reminder to leave open ended the manner in which I want my prayers answered. Why put limits upon what the Universe can conjure up? 

Eleven ... I still cannot reconcile how this little girl ...

turned into this no-longer-so-little girl?

 Thankfully, she is keeping me young-ish ... at least in body, if not mind!

gentle transitions ...

Tomorrow would have been her birthday. 

She would have been ninety.

A Spring baby ... the youngest of three children and the only girl ... I wonder what blessings her mother bestowed upon her when she was fresh and new? What secret hopes did my grandmother hold in her heart, in her dreams for her only girl child?

This Spring arrives in the nick of time.  I know grief is not finished with me, but I am ready for the heaviness within to lighten and I feel my heart turning towards the horizon, towards new beginning, new cycles and new growth.

For months I have been in deep conversation with the Moon ... unraveling her meaning for me and coming to understand the extent to which she illuminates my relationship with my mother and with myself. My moon mandala practice has ushered me into the mysteries of Maiden/Mother/Queen/Crone and unusual for me, I am relaxing into an understanding that lies beneath language, below what the mind can grasp.  

I tried to explain to the Husband how my relationship with my mother is best described by the moon: how all my life has been a continual journeying out and away from her, collecting experiences, gathering knowledge and but always orbiting back to be seen and understood by her light. Now I journey out and I must make myself return ... I must find a new source of illumination to guide me, a new anchor to hold my sense of self tethered to life.

I am finding my way through simple practices.  Each morning I feed myself one poem, moving mindfully and attentively through River Flow: New & Selected Poems by David Whyte.  

As someone prone to gobbling books up, it is beneficial practice to make myself take time and care, savoring the words, the lines, the rhythm of his art.

I am cycling back to beginnings, remembering how it felt when I first returned to creative play years ago. The simple pleasure of gathering materials, creating bright, colorful things because they pleased me, they brightened my day. 

Getting out of my way and cleansing myself of thoughts about Bigness and Importance and Grand Acts. Enjoying the simple, the playful, the tiny bright moments that lift my spirit and refresh my heart.  

These are all things she would understand ... she delighted in my creative play while quietly pursuing her own.  I mark her birthday with colorful adornment (she was known for her stylish outfits, beautifully coordinated and accessorized) ...

and I honor this season of new beginnings, new growth, and new opportunities to choose Love. I honor the mystery that calls me forward, that carries me through the darkness for I know in my cells, in my soul, it brings me home.

And so to these

unspoken shadows

and this broad night

I make

a quiet

request

to the

great paternal 

darkness

to hold her

when I cannot,

to comfort her

when I am gone,

to help her learn

to love

the unknown

for itself, 

to take it 

gladly 

like 

a lantern

for the way

before her,

to make her see

where ordinary light

cannot help,

where happiness had fled,

where faith

will not reach.

-David Whyte (excerpt from My Daughter Asleep)

 

Happy Birthday Momma. I lean against your cloak of darkness and I feel your love.