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.

the gift of magic

The wonderful wand my son made for me last year, wood gathered from our property, selected specifically for me, sanded and carved by hand, with the little crook at the end left intact so as to provide a good hold for my small hands.

I love the gold swirl going up the wand and ending in a solid gold tip.




This is the same son who at the age of 5 divined that I was anxious about the mail coming (I had queried my very first agent and was obsessively checking the mailbox every 15 minutes every day for weeks). He made himself scarce one morning, and then smiling, asked me to go check the mailbox. Inside there were easily a hundred envelopes, with "mom" written on the front, sealed and all containing tiny notes that said "I love you."

I'm not sure who was happier when I returned from the box holding all those letters.

Magic, indeed.

Apart from sleep where the creative act seems involuntary and instantaneous, it does appear that a creative process goes on all the time beneath the level of conscious thought.

--Neil Gunn, The Atom of Delight