"Blackbirds like small priests walked in the silent fields." --Niall Williams

This was in my chair when I got home today:

Carl Cook photo

If you scroll to the bottom, my photo is the one of the two crows silhouetted in the full moon. It is GORGEOUS.

Browse Carl's entire website for more stunning shots and lots of interesting lore about corvids. If I were an editor for a publishing house, I'd snap him up. What a gorgeous book it would be - his photos and the accompanying quotes, facts, and his own anecdotes and essays.

a slow and steady rain

I woke up to rain and cooler air. Outside, the little stream that flows through our front field when it rains hard isn't there. The rain falls steady, you can hear it soaking into the earth, almost see the greening in process as the roots drink and swell.

Often spring is too intense for me. The hum of insects, the feeling that beneath the surface things are pushing to burst forth, the winds -- building to a crescendo that, until it happens, seems unbearable.

This spring seems to be taking a slower pace, and today's rain, at least right now, feels like a long slow drink.

thursday

You are not at the mercy of your inadequacy. You are capable of acts of wholeness.

-Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul

the good life

In many ways, today seemed like the first real day of spring. The sun was warm, the flowers blooming. Birdsong like a chorus coming from every direction. Barn swallows arrowing out of the barn when I walked in.

After breakfast, two horses got massages while the cats chased one another, explored the massage therapist's truck, and finally settled down for a mid-morning collapse.

Suddenly it was quiet, except for the occasional soft snort of a relaxed horse, the distant call of a bird.

Nowhere to be but right here.

elemental

earth



water



air



fire


circumambulatio: the process of individuation through the four stages of life.

the four elements: wholeness.

circulatio: moving through the four elements, repeating the process again but always on another level.

life: an adventure which never comes to an end, new vistas, new layers of understanding, never having it all sorted out.

conjunctio: bringing the body and spirit together, the incarnation of divinity.