The Wind that Defines Our Shapes

1.
The forecast calls for 90 degree temperatures and 40 mile an hour winds.  I water the garden anyway, knowing that only a portion of the white diamonds that shoot skyward will reach the ground.  The rest fly away to some other treasure chest.

The ribs are a treasure chest.  I breathe the diamond air as the wind defines my shape.  I stop in the middle of the yard, close my eyes and the warm breath curves around me, holding.

There has been no journey in my life that was not a spiritual one, and all my thinking about "right choices" and "wrong choices" feels like an unnecessary denial of this truth.  In truth, I don't like to argue. I don't like to resist.  I don't like to fight.  Anger is some way we attempt to hold the wind in our hands, howling like the ghost of a feral cat.  I am not angry at my life despite all the times I've resisted it.  Quite the opposite.  I have been shown how to stop wearing myself out in that way. Strangely, I had to work physically in order to understand this.

How the body is part of the story:  I am also aware of my own bones, the necessary borders between my skin and the wind.  I am aware of myself lifted like some migratory seed.  And when I come back down to earth, I root my feet there and feel the intensity of this unfolding.  I will carry you always despite whether you allow Me to or not.

2.
Last night I had a dream that I had to drive my truck up and over a ramp that curved into the sky and dropped several stories at the end.

For some reason Burt Reynolds was there, but never mind.  I'm being serious here, and it's difficult to consider Burt's hair, which one must when invoking his image, without cracking up a bit.

But maybe that's what I'm talking about:  allowing myself to relax.  Trust.  The dream defied gravity.  There were spectators in dangerous rows beneath me.  And the responsibility of the jump felt too heavy.  It wasn't that I was afraid of the actual leap; I was afraid of hurting anyone in the process.

In the dream, I went cautious around the curve and was placed gently on the ground, safe.  Everyone was safe.  And they were cheering.

3.
I am an explorer in this domain, passing over the earth, breaking it open to root my feet there, growing up in the strong wind that defines me, presses against me--a necessary pressure, so I am forced to define my boundaries, my voice.  And this strange song lifts me green: what it means to know love.

Love is a verb.  The potato beetles that eat the leaves of my eggplant are not mistakes.   I move closer to matter, to the earth in order to integrate it into my skin, the imaginative function, the Spirit that speaks to me in the hollow space I want to leave open for you, the seed dropped in, the diamond roots going deep.  Love is a verb.

One must be present in order to receive the gift.  Any worry is like the hard crust that forms over the garden when it has been wet and wind blows hot across it.  The truth is life always rises above it.  We are meant to experience this triumph.  I drop the feral cat.

And here I am, feeling my way around, eyes closed and lifted by this warm breath that rises in both my chest and in the expanding and contracting lungs of this spacious life.

There is a holiness in the heart's affections.  The red, vivacious seed within that space is moved autonomically.   I am one place in which this seed grows.  And you are another.   This is a divine mystery written on the Breath that defines and moves us.