What do I know to be true?

My friend called a wisdom gathering of a few dozen women of whom she asked the question,

What do you know to be true?

~*~

What do I know to be true?

All is One. In every scale of the Universe, a complex harmony resonates. Each key flows seamlessly to the next. Allowing our vibrations to echo without alteration makes the music more beautiful, the song more complete. Clearing the plane for every melody to ring true and free makes the world more just and peaceful. Listening helps us to learn our next step.

Reality is a network of love-being. When we strip down to our most vulnerable place, we can touch bones of light, our shimmering foundation. Removing masks of pretense, shedding material comfort, relinquishing ambition, forgetting language - these are steps that move us back to the Source. Bounds of Self dissolve as we meet the deep gaze of another's eyes, the vast ocean of teeming beings, the elements forged in star bodies, the energetic swirl of galaxies and aeons.

This human life is an earthy experience of personhood that gifts us with the ability to reflect on this blissful union. Our work is to melt into the free form of love-being by living as who we are. Manifesting authentically is an essential step in the process of cosmic evolution. Being true to who we are, honest with what we understand, vulnerable with where we are growing, and loving to all Life is to remember why we exist at all.

When I remember that All is One, I honor that nothing is lost. I trust I am never alone. I envision broad possibility. I walk gently. I move gracefully. I create passionately. I love wholly.

Sacred Night

The night has always felt like sacred time. Sacred - from the Latin 'sacare,' which means cut off or set apart. When I wake in the dark and feel compelled to put the flow of my spirit wanderings to words, it is time separate from the course of days that can feel relentless. The spaciousness of a quiet and dim house blurs the edges of hours and obligations, makes me feel free to release with honesty and without worry about what I am not doing.

Although the bright sunshine charges my body, dreaming and pondering in darkness taps the well of undercurrent consciousness that waters my roots. Down, down below the surface of activity and effort is a place underground. This cave of solitude, cavernous respite, becomes a chapel for the simple ritual of connecting to myself.

Here, the inner becomes the outer. I am sometimes startled by my projections onto shadows as I navigate the physical darkness, for I assume they are as alive as my palpably present thoughts - they move like moonbeams bouncing off water onto on the walls of my inner temple. I imagine myself floating on a boat in this underground cave, light spilling from an unknown source underneath, wave patterns flickering on stalactites and crystals.

Sometimes, I meet guest-messengers here. Tonight, though, I am alone, and the task is to rest in my wakefulness. Sleep is evasive, but refreshment can come from claiming this sliver of time as a gift. I float, trailing a hand in the warm water, letting my soul be nurtured by the velvety blackness, the echoing sighs of my quiet breathing.

The confines of my cave open me to an ocean of transcendence. The crystals are stars in the firmament. The wall reflections are wave functions, frequency patterns of possibility. The light is the center of the earth, molten with energy, releasing minerals to strengthen my bones.

I am reminded of the dark sacredness I find in the daylight, as encounters with that deep place in people who do not fear the night. My companions, you are here with me. Our souls shimmer in the facets of gems and galaxies, reflecting fresh dimensions of beauty. Through the inward well, channel to the source, we swim out into the sea together. We ascend into the glittering cathedral of precious stone and insight. We rise into blackness, the cosmic horizon.

The Passion of a Wonderful World

The morning of Good Friday, my sleepy child hung on my neck and looked at me with expectant eyes, seeking a distraction from his runny nose. I looked at the gray skies out the window and, reflexively, began to sing – You are my sunshine…my only sunshine!  With a quick smile, he began to laugh and bounce.

Suddenly, an old familiar tune popped into my mind and flowed from my mouth:

I see trees of green, red roses, too,

I see them bloom for me and you

and I think to myself, 'What a wonderful world...'

My son's joy prompted me to search for and play the full song. Louis Armstrong's serenade swirled us around the room as we sang and danced. The final verse arrived and, before I knew it, tears began to brim in my eyes with an unconscious recognition; I fell silent and just listened to the poignant close:

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow -

they'll learn much more than I'll ever know,

and I think to myself, 'What a wonderful world...'

I sighed and pulled my boy a little nearer. Nothing has brought me closer to a sense of my own mortality than becoming a mother. I have never so fiercely protected a life as I have his, and I have never valued mine so highly until I felt his intrinsic dependence on me. I have said many times that he teaches me how best to heal this world, and myself. He has already been a natural instructor in letting things go. He shows, again and again, that each day brings new possibility, that each new death yields life formerly unimaginable.

The night before, the two of us gathered with community members to honor the beginning of the Triduum. Imitating the symbolic image of servanthood shared in the story that evening, the entire church took turns sitting to have their feet washed and washing another’s feet. Because it was unscripted and simple, resonant icons began to take form as person after person enacted the ritual. Elders washed the feet of young members. Children washed their parents’ feet. Those who needed assistance nobly enacted the foot washing, slowly but surely, with patience and help. Publicly-known disagreements, disputes, and differences faded away as, sitting and resting feet in a bowl or taking up a towel and pitcher, companionship was recognized in the mutual act of grace.

My son was fast asleep; I cradled him in my arms as I sat down. The woman at my feet was a lifelong friend, the mother of my childhood playmates, someone who has washed my feet before in many ways and times. We both shed tears as she gently poured the water over my feet, then dried them. I carefully lowered my son over the bowl and she washed his feet, too. He sighed sweetly as he dreamt, held in the sacred space of being tended to without reciprocation. We embraced, and she held my sleeping baby as I turned to wash the feet of another.

The next morning, dancing to Louis Armstrong, my boy sensed I was crying. He pulled back and looked me in the eyes, softly touched my face, understood beyond understanding. Silently, he opened his mouth and pressed it to my cheek.

I see friends shaking hands, saying, ‘How do you do?’

They’re really saying, ‘I love you…’

It is a magnificent mystery, the truth that my son will see farther into the future than I; his eyes will look longer at the world than mine. I sing to, clean, feed, comfort, play with, learn from, and love this little boy...but I will not know the extent of his expansion. Although I receive bountiful gifts from our life together, the direction of energy most often feels outward and into him. But I trust that this watering of his small spirit will yield seeds, then fruit; I know that my life is meaningful because I try, in futile but dutiful ways, to leave this world more beautiful for him; I trust that when my body finally falls into eternal rest, the continued animations of his life will be as close to a personal immortality as I can imagine.

When I gathered at the church again on Good Friday evening (this time leaving my sleepy little one at home in his father’s arms), a familiar story of suffering-love was transformed. Rather than hearing a story of a man’s self-sacrifice for a new world, I heard the story of a son, loved and lost. In my mind’s eye, all I could see was Mary at the foot of the cross.

Mary, Mother, looking up at a son to whom she gave her life.

Mother, gazing at her suffering son crucified unjustly…the eyes of countless women watching their sons shot, beaten, executed, sent off to war.

Mother, holding her child close…waking with him in the morning, dancing and singing with him, feeling his wet kiss on her cheek.

Mother, living beyond what her son would see – the cruel inverse of the right destiny of parents and children.

Mother Christ, borne through a woman who had to watch her son die, then live into the mystery of continued life.

Mother Christ, alive in women across the globe who have died to their old selves to give life to their children and the children of all future generations.

I listened as, in the circle of silence, the millennia-old story shifted to a litany calling those gathered to open their hearts to the people of our planet still crucified. Suffering people – a people of Passion, which means to hurt. Compassion – the place of suffering together. Community – a place where suffering is transformed through our oneness. 

The starving, the tortured, the poor, the oppressed…Christ borne as Children deserving of restoration of dignity so that they may live into the future they have come to manifest.

I watched as two women danced around a simple, wooden cross that had traveled across Louisville earlier that day, carried by pilgrims who stopped at living stations, places representative of the injustice that still harms our human family. The women danced, and I saw them as two spirits swirling around this wonderful world, burning with flames that held the hurting, blazing with fire to heal the harm. 

There is death…and there is resurrection. Life is unfailing and resurrection prevails. This is our Passion story of Easter hope: to continue to make the world new for our children.

Sunday dawned with brilliant sunshine. The birds sang, the light drew the curtains, and my husband, child, and I basked in the relaxed freshness of Easter morning. 

Spring always returns; babies continue to be born. The light always arrives after the rainfall. Eternity comes in moments; salvation, in love.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white,

the bright, blessed day, the dark, sacred night,

and I think to myself, 'What a wonderful world...'

To my astonishment, at my in-laws' house, there was a little board book in my son’s Easter basket with a familiar title. My mother-in-law said she just knew we had to have it when she saw it. Tears again filled my eyes as, Mother and Son, we read the Passion of this wonderful world – one of brokenness and blessing, of hurting and healing, of loving so fully that, when we let go, we know we will be reborn.

…Yes, I think to myself, ‘What a wonderful world.’

A Day's Work

I find myself on the other edge of a night - closer to the moment of surprise when, nursing Oak, I glanced outside to see the round moon caught in the cage of budding dogwood branches. The laughter of playing children grew quieter; Oak's breathing grew heavier. Settling, the world dropped its shoulders and admired its work. I, too, allowed myself to step off the balance beam and fall into a more organic alignment, simply resting with my baby, content with what accomplishment I could attribute to the time since sunrise. As the sky darkened, I felt lighter.

I am sitting in the dark on the edge of my bed, already beginning to mentally measure the obligations of this new day, which still feels like tomorrow. These stolen moments of silence - when Oak is content to lay alone, when Robby's breathing from the other room leaves a small ache in my heart from the distance - are when I want to capture the moonrise of thought that sneaks up in a moment. My spirit whispers, "Write!" My mind races with anxious questions that narrow my scope. Can I get the work done tomorrow that I wasn't able to finish today? How will our family juggle sickness, childcare, work, community...rest? So, I type what is true and trust that making just a little space is a gift I can give myself in this time between days.

I hear Robby stirring in the other room - perhaps I woke him. There is a strange intimacy in darkness that brings everything closer. I can hear his movement like the taps of my fingers. Oak's sudden intake of breath is in my chest. These moments, like the moment of holding my baby close at the end of a day and trusting that I have done enough, throw into relief the power of moving one step at a time: noticing, not hoping. I will finish typing and turn off the screen. Sleep will return, likely in ample measure to sustain me through. This will not be the last glance inward I am offered. Everything is held within me - my work is always done, and not yet started.

Tears come to my eyes as I feel in my heart the innumerable parents cradling their children in the dark, the lovers forsaking sleep for a more physical union, the workers whose work will continue until sunrise: the body of humanity laboring away, making something new.

Robby comes to bed. Happiness is a full bed of sleepy bodies to warm you. I prepare to turn in again, to slip off the edge of knowing, to let my soul rest like the eternally evolving stars.

One Dark Morning

Greetings to the dark morning, a cave of quiet inside gentle raindrops' canopy. The dripping window panes are a looking glass, welcoming me to recognize my reflection in the wet, budding trees receiving the day and the deep clouds of refreshment at their upturned fingertips. The warmth of the armchair and comforter ask me to be soft; my baby's restlessness and his heavy breathing compel me to stillness.

Hunger and exhaustion, insistent guests in this body, are telling me with their urges that I am alive, I am awake. As my child cries out in his sleep and nestles closer to my chest, these rhythms - our parallel heartbeats, our complimentary breath, the rainfall of a beginning spring day - align me to awareness. For a time, I hold what is vulnerable and yearning in the world. My ears are tender to the cries, my heart to the heaviness, my body to the weariness.

I let the rain seep into the Soul of Life I carry and quench the parched thirst for rest and comfort. There is no insulation from the worries and woes but there is cleansing. I allow these burdens to feel malleable and mutable - they atomize and fall like drops to water seeds of attention in my being. I touch my child's hand though I cannot see, inhale, and sigh. I accept. I hold. I release.

The birds begin their singing.

Growing Softer

I run a hand along my calf to feel the difference. Raising my arms above my head, I notice the dark patch between my arm and torso. A new portrait of myself: bare face, stretched belly, hairy legs and underarms. More roundness, less symmetry.

My son crawls up to me as I dress for the day, catches my eye in the mirror, and smiles his two-toothed grin. Arriving at my feet, he reaches out and gently rests a hand on my leg for support as he wobbly stands. The months have flown, my hair has grown, but my fuzzy shins cause my baby boy no offense. As I scoop him up and he wraps my neck with his arms, I realize again the many levels of my life he has reformed.

Because of my son, I have made the intentional choice to let my body hair grow. I could half-joke and say the reason is that I no longer have time to shave in the shower. The real reason is that, when I thought about why I did, I could not convincingly say it was because I wanted to. When the day comes that, instead of babbling sweetly, he offers a question about my choices, I want to answer him with honesty.

I remember the embarrassment and shame I once felt as a young woman when signs of maturation first sprouted. The hair on my legs was a glowering advertisement that I was not yet allowed to shave, physically and emotionally caught between stages of adolescence. The hair on my underarms was a bitter annoyance as, drawing a blade across delicate skin, I felt the sting of shearing unsightly evidence of womanhood. Like menstruation’s secret rhythm of moods and months, hair removal was a private ritual that punctuated my weeks and demanded investments of time, money, and energy. Whether or not I had shaved dictated my clothing choices, my confidence, and my sense of acceptability. Rather than an initiation into womanhood, I felt hair removal to be a necessary burden in the business of becoming a woman.

According to one British survey, women spend 72 days and $10,000 shaving over a lifetime. I could craft feminist arguments on the origins of this beauty regimen, capitalism’s perpetuation of the practice for profit, or the political statement made by shaving, or not shaving, or being a conscious person and still choosing to shave. I am not interested in making an argument, but in making my life a reflection of truth for a small human whose inquisitive eyes will see beyond smooth skin and shallow defenses. It may seem silly, but this concrete preoccupation is one of my many. What other ways do I conduct my life according to thoughtless conformity?

This whole-self alteration is harder than lathering up lotion and grabbing a razor. It means that, when I slipped on my first skirt of the season, I had to relive the awkwardness of adolescence all over again. Will anyone notice my leg hair? It sounds shallow and self-absorbed, but it was real. Then, of course, I saw it was unreal. No one noticed or, if they did, it did not matter. The practice of bearing my body just as it is requires that I find ways to look at myself as beautiful without mediation. I must take control of my opinion of my appearance, the way I spend my money, the matters to which I give my hours. What will I do with 72 days and $10,000? with a newfound authenticity?

By letting go of this cumbersome ritual, I am discovering the value of being less polished and more vulnerable. In my son’s smiling eyes, I am painted in motherhood’s media: more pastel than pen-and-ink, less like a sculpture chiseled from blades but more like a molded clay figure – earthy and honest, a figure growing softer for the sake of living truthfully.

What We Can't Keep

There are days that defy description, that cannot be captured in any dimension but the aligned experience of the present. Today became such a series of moments that led to greater luminosity and clarity. 

Sharing a spontaneous morning heart-to-heart with a mentor helped to reconcile my immanent personal discernment with a vision of my Life Path. Spending time charging my spirit in the sunshine as I did work that connected me to the stories of people in prison in our country - that brought into relief new understanding of how my freedom is bound to theirs - reminded me of the privilege I am granted to bear their lives in my heart. Writing notes to strangers while seeing them through the eyes of people who love them drew me deeper down into the vibrating network of relationships that I am ever enmeshed in, but often forgetful of. Making another spontaneous connection with a friend who is a flame of inspiration to me grounded me in gratitude for the vital necessity of his life - of all manifestations of Life and the helpers, like him, who tend it.

Walking with my dogs, my husband, my child into a beautiful sunset moved me to try to take a picture, for I so wanted to hold it, to keep it...but I found the photo a far inadequate visage of the sunset's beauty and power, the way the light held everything in that moment, the way all our eyes were drawn into the vastness of a sky heralding transition, the fleeting illusion of color and contrast that, in all its ethereal wonder, was real. All I could do was look at my son, my husband, my dogs - beings I love beyond love - glowing in the close of the day, and feel the ache in my heart that reminds me that I have been touched, that I am alive.

The way my life is shaped by the people who form its lattice of love is beyond explanation. The hazy film of energy I see settling on an evening, the atoms pulsing and swirling as trees and fields of grass, surpasses my ability to ask if anyone else can see it, too. A day that can carry me from one place to another, though I find myself tonight in the same bed from which I rose this morning, is a mystery to cradle in sleep. In awe, I surrender to dreams this transitory gift as an offering to be woven into my neural memory, to be sacrificed to the common spirit, to be let go with bewildered thanks.

The Teacher

to Oak Olivam

This morning, I watched your delighted eyes
observe the squirrel snacking on crabapple berries,
grasping bare branches, limbs clinging to a cold sky.
Each quick movement of paws and twitch of tail was
caught in the lattice of your unfolding awareness -
tracery of wonder. You held your gaze. I wanted to see
how rhythmically the small mammal plucked and chewed
and paused, the bobbing dance of skillfully traversed treetops,
but I could not look away from the profile of your sunny brow,
your lashes laced with light pouring in through the window
and settling like a traveling cloak on your small body.
Where will you journey, little one? I wanted to listen
for the note in the chattering birdsong that made you smile,
but your mesmerized mouth breathed a quiet poetry
that softly filled my ears with its thoughtlessness.
What mysteries will your life reveal? I wanted to catch
the moments of blossoming beauty that animated your fingers
to trace the air as if memorizing the movements of gathering,
but I accomplished nothing I can capture or measure or recount
with the clarity of your awe, the power of your attention.
How will your learning teach this humble disciple? In silence,
you turn to me, your eyes offering countless wordless answers.

Not Someday - This Day.

When do we arrive at the end, having learned all we need to know?

Someday, I believed, I will find the secret to being a perfectly attentive mother. I am still new - my babe is only six months old; I have time to grow and practice and perfect. I will learn the trick to encourage him to sleep through the night. I will understand how to balance my priorities as an adult engaged in the world with the responsibilities of being a mother. Someday, the mystery will lift like fog and the ideal alignment will settle like sunshine on my shoulders.

Someday, I will have a perfect confidence with myself as a wife, co-worker, friend, daughter, sister, employer. I will stick to a meditation routine that gives me pause every morning. I will limit my groceries to all local or organic, whole, unprocessed foods. I will study the daily news and research its authenticity. I will better educate myself on the history of structural oppression, philosophy, politics, global economics, poetry, and writing composition. My yoga practice will be daily and reflexive. I will revere my body as a temple that is the gateway to earthly salvation.

Someday, I will offer perfect compassion to everyone I meet. I will work for justice in the world to forge new possibilities for my child and the world's children. I will speak to amplify unheard voices. I will express myself eloquently through written word and speak with clarity. Each act will flow as an extension of my most core values and visions.

Will this ideal embodiment culminate in a moment of perfect enlightenment, an irreversible occurrence of self-actualization? Will thunder roll, the clouds part, and light shine from the tips of my fingers? When will I know that I am close to this illumination?

I once thought of this life - the adventure of personhood - as a linear journey with clearly demarcated steps of advancement. I looked forward to finding my way to the end, taking a deep breath, and settling beneath a welcoming tree for a rest. I could imagine reflecting on my life and connecting one place to another in my mind to reveal the elegantly simple plan that led to my finale. What contentment and peace that would bring!

This old vision lingers as a mirage at times when I wonder selfishly how and when my hard work will be recognized. Its temptation shimmers when I think I have arrived at an ultimately right idea. I long for the false refreshment of satisfaction in knowing I completed the Task, finished the Race, and stand correctly in the best place.

My living has brought me to the edge of this imagined oasis and, at times, I have had a seat and patted my back. Soon, however, a challenging friend or sharp insight or internal voice of consciousness identifies the hole in my self-constructed landscape. The mirage melts away with my sense of certainty. Lately, my primary mentor has been my child - his vulnerability presses against the edges of my self-preoccupation and I see that my previously defined boundaries of care must again expand. I begin to realize how easily I succumb to distraction and how ardently my love for him fuels my renewed focus. My once firmly established understanding of my physical, emotional, or spiritual needs have shrunk or expanded in direct proportion to his more earthy rhythms.

At some point, I started to wonder if perhaps I might never arrive, but perpetually travel in ebb and flow through this life. I began to imagine this path not as a destination at which to arrive but a state of being to practice every step. The only adventure on which to embark is the journey of now. No achievement, only work. No end, only endless beginning. No fulfillment, only flourishing.

Not someday, but this day.

My path led me to fertile ground of receptivity and, in this soft soil, I planted myself as a seed. My becoming is now blossoming; layers of personal evolution unfurl around one another. Like a complex lotus flower, there may be a shifting and temporary center or edge, but the waves of potential are the points of exploration. By the time I feel I have learned something, the ground shifts - either the object of knowing or myself have changed. Both seem to transform with each emanation of wisdom that situates me at another beginning.

In my former life as a wanderer, I created the fear that I was always in the wrong place, the space of not-quite. While I undoubtedly have aeons to go and light years to travel, I now hold a different perspective: that we all are ever in the place of possibility, space of abundant resources, framework of infinite opportunity. The only real chance is this thought, feeling, word, action, response. We do not have somewhere to go, we have somehow to be.

This shift is seismic though elusive and at first imperceptible. As a person, I find that I fall in and out of this perspective from step to step. But the beauty of the vision is that it is always possible to begin again. The sum of the beginnings amounts to something more than the eye can see. It plows the furrow for more seeds, more chances to say yes, and creates soft places for others to pause on their paths and sit long enough to remember and root. My wandering has turned to wonder at my, our, privilege to be something new every moment. The collective fruit could nourish a revolutionary appetite for interconnected efforts to manifest lofty potentials in the here and now.

As a national and worldwide community, I wonder what could happen if we paused and planted. Imagine a country where assumptions of what constitutes progress are relinquished for a vision of radical presence. Imagine if citizens looked one another in the eye, listened, and then decided how to be. Imagine if politics were dominated by the constant attempt to see and tell the truth that there is no placeholder for the greatest country or ladder of economic achievement to scale - there is only a more real way to be together at this moment. Not someday, but this day. There is no Worse or Better, only Less Life or More Life flourishing.

In these times, I hear all around and within the protest that it is too difficult to change, as if the tide of possibility has swept us away beyond agency. I hear that progress toward the non-existent utopia of our dreams is a valid path, as if all people currently have equal or any access to lives of meaning. I hear denial that things need to change at all, that the world is fine as it is, as if the clamor of myriad animal and plant species did not resonate with urgency. These counterpoints ring with the vibration of my own fixation on the false comfort that we have somewhere to be, or are already there.

Not someday past or future, but this day. We cannot, should not, deny our history; if only we knew the reality of where we have been, we might not recreate its horrors or triumphs so thoughtlessly. We cannot, should not, deny the need for forethought; if only the generations of Earth creatures to come were accounted for with each breath of Life, there might not be so much work to do. These form the yoke on our shoulders as we walk and till each attentive second; these are the frequency gardens to marvel and examine as our present flowers of awareness grow into new dimensions. This day, we can move in a less detectable direction - not backward or forward, but outward.

I wake and turn my thoughts to gratitude.

I celebrate my child how he is.

I look a homeless passerby in the eye.

I listen to the words of my enemy without prejudgment.

I choose the simpler, more sustainable meal.

I acknowledge every person I encounter.

I write to my representative.

I pay careful attention to my husband.

I rest and reflect.

I try the bus instead of driving.

I do not buy anything new.

I examine my position as a person of privilege.

I speak the kinder word.

I notice other forms of Life throughout my day.

I ask a question without assumptions.

I demand better treatment of marginalized people.

I negotiate for peace.

I am.

I wonder. I plant. I wait. I act. I nurture. I hope.

I make connections and affirm I do not have the whole vision.


Where will these practices take us?
How will we know we are doing the right thing?
When do we arrive at the end, having learned all we need to know?

No Where. No Way. No other time or place.
But this day, we can begin, and begin again.

The Rumination of Motherhood

Be still and present to this moment.

Receive the teaching of the mystery held here and now.

Surrender yourself.

Breathe…Pay attention. All truth is found right where you are.

Familiar mantras float through my mind as I find myself sitting, legs crossed, in a comfortable chair in a quiet room. I breathe slowly, intentionally. Although distractions disrupt the spacious silence – thoughts of the chores still to do, grumbles in my stomach, the occasional scuffle of my two dogs playing – I continually return to attention, fixated on the sacredness of this moment. All my life, I have longed for the discipline to make space daily to meditate. At times, I have embraced this practice with dedication; mostly, though, I have half-heartedly tried and failed. However, for six weeks, I have paused a dozen times a day, found stillness, and relinquished the drive to move and act to surrender to the need to be present fully in contemplation.

As I sit, I look down at my miraculous instructor. In my arms rests the mentor I did not know I sought: my son, Oak, who is teaching me this new way of intentionality. I realize that I still have not found an ideal inner alignment that motivates me to meditation. But Oak reminds me, by inviting me countless times a day to stop whatever task seems urgent to my busy mind, to move through my days in a better way. He gently asks, with little cries and wriggles, to be held, to be fed, to be paid attention to. In spite of myself, with deep love, I sit, cradle him in my arms, put him to my breast, and breathe.

Little did I know the sheer demand of breastfeeding, of motherhood, before Oak initiated me. I could not fathom the way time would slide by, slipping into cycles beyond parameters, as his small body simply requested its needs and I fulfilled them.  The hours each week add up to entire days spent sitting, nursing, sometimes reading a book or resting my eyes, but mostly, marveling at the beauty of this earthy act of being present to Oak and his attention to me. Love beyond love. Perhaps that is the first, greatest lesson he is offering: we do not change out of duty or discipline. We cannot transform our life because we feel we should. We alter our lives because we are pushed beyond ourselves; we do it out of love.

The practice is not easy, because it is pervasive. I have not felt resentment, but I have begrudgingly scooped up my son in the early hours of morning and sighed in exhaustion as we sit together in the dark. I have felt anxiety as he puts his fists to his mouth and coos mere minutes after a feeding – he needs to nurse again? I close the book, turn off the stove, and return to the discipline. When is it time to be present? Always, here and now. He smiles as he falls into sleep and lets my breast fall from his mouth. There are no boundaries. This, always this, is a holy moment, the gateway to enlightenment. 

And this is the secret knowledge mothers have held for millennia. Not in temples or shrines, not by kneeling or folding hands or reciting rote prayers, but simply by opening arms and welcoming into our laps the need most present to us do we embrace the sacred. The ancient Roman goddess of Breastfeeding and Motherhood was named Rumina, “she who causes the milk to flow.” The old Latin word for breast is rumis or ruma; to ruminate means to ponder, to wonder, to pay attention to. Each comforting stroke of a cheek is a prayer; each thrill of delight in our child’s growth is an acknowledgment of the divine all around us. Our children are the instructors who illuminate the meaning of life; they create a space first in our bodies, then in our lives and hearts, that empties us of self-absorption. The rumination of motherhood leads us to the knowledge of how much we do not know. It humbles us to the messy, embodied work of true presence. It allows us to forget ourselves so as to remember who we really are.

A mother needs no mantra but the quiet, rhythmic suckling of a child near her heart. She needs no practice but the constant surrender of self to something greater: a small human being who will outlive her into a world she cannot imagine. The mystery is not so hidden, just disguised as the intimate, liminal relationship between mother and baby. Oak shows me, over and over, that no journey to a mountaintop is needed. I only need to be willing to accept his teaching – the invitation to the nourishment that comes in the form of caring for another. Be still, he asks, summoning me with the gentle drop of his eyelashes. Pay attention, he says, grasping my finger in his little hand. Let love transform your life. I breathe in, I breathe out. All truth is found right where you are.

His Birth

for Nicholas Oak Olivam

Firefly orbs            and         day lily blooms.

New moon, dark moon – waxing lunar face.

Midsummer, solstice sun – waning solar strength.

               A mystic’s map:                   dreams, and          an astral alignment of renewal.

Womb turns with awakening                           in morning.                                                        His birth begins.

Rushes like ebb and flow of currents pulled by celestial bodies –

                                                            labyrinthine pathways downward, earthward.

Breathe                  moan                     grunt                     silence.                                Expansive elation, and ache.

Suffering and joy. Clutch, release. Only this moment, dive in       

               Ocean of Unknown.                                                                                       The day stretches into two.

Slow intensity – hips sway side to side, measure progress by their circles –

                                                            time lapses in round rhythms of descent.

Deep healing cave waters. Open, throaty Oms –            primal energy                       grounding struggle.

               His father’s hands hold steady.                                                                     The sun hangs high, drops.

                                                                                                                         Sliver of moon cuts shades of hours.

Finally                   path of surrender illuminates. Fear flies at the holy dusk of wonder: the secret –

kill all knowing                     sacrifice fixation                   trust what has always unfolded despite you.

                                                            No truth, only a way to follow –                                this.

Space is only here-now, soft shadow and mystery and    pain –     bodies                    separating.           

                              Waters break and channel flows like moonbeams.

Push.                                                   Blood in swells –                                 stream of spirit

                              in waves of strong medicine from nameless matrilineage,

ancestors speaking walking swimming birthing                              beyond.

Black hair curls over crowning head –

fingers touch                        the miraculous.    

Portal opens –                                       Joy –                      Power –                Scream –    another

soft, long awaited cry           and                        Love.  His father’s hands place him – limbs, shoulders, lips

between my arms. Hearts beat, rest on one another.                                     Cord pulses, stills.

Luminous body born in night: pearl-white skin to purple – my own flesh in my arms –

not mine,               something                                                     eternal.

He looks up–                       dark-bright eyes see older than paradox.

Victory of the people.         Rooted doorway of prophecy.           Sacred extension of peace.

Fulfillment like the immovable sun, the steadfast moon – transformation like the tides.

                                                                                                           His birth begins.

Letter to My Child

My Child,

I have been unsure if it is possible to love someone, something unknown. But here you are, making space by stretching the dimensions of who I thought I could be. I have yet to see your face, though you’ve sent a wordless communication with the beat of your heart: “Here I am.” My body, the only home you’ve known, is roped to you by a cord of blood and flesh, a link that blurs the line of distinction between who you are and who I am. Even so, with so little tangibly apprehended, how can I know you? Even in this dark mystery, my devotion to you is absolute.

I was not sure it was possible to know myself, let alone to love myself. Yet the person I am responds beyond knowledge to the energetic pull of you. My body follows ancient maps to navigate your arrival, written in code language that has never been seen or understood in its entirety. In the center of my body is a vortex, an energy field where you lie; it warps time and space around you, realigning my whole being. I know you by these signs: the gradual transformation of my identity, shaped now by a different definition of autonomy; the expansion of my belly and emotional body; the new protective presences I sense around us.

Wherever I go, you go. The air I breathe is yours. The nourishment I take is yours. My rest is your rest. My heartbeat thumps in time with yours. How can we inhabit this body together so comfortably, perfectly held in the lap of destiny? How can we be said to be strangers when I know and love you more than anything I have ever known or loved?

We are all born into the world this way. In time, cords are cut and rot away. Heartbeats are not in rhythm. But what could sever the phenomenological threads of such intimate familiarity, save illusion or ignorance? These conditions are temporary constructions. By illumination, or by death, we will be born again into that Awareness that has known us all since the beginning. Each of us is ever held in an infinite womb of Light, where we have always been Love, and Beloved.

My body will soon confine you in too small a space, and you will break forth into this world, my love. Remember, though, that you never leave the other world. We will always have known one another beyond familiarity, suspended together in the dark and light.

Love always,

Mother

For Theo

An audacious sunrise announced the morning of your advent, covering the city’s night sky.

Pear trees bloomed like stars, clean palettes for the veins of light,

pink and gold and purple, that heralded your coming.

Buds were beginning on the dogwood and crab apple trees;

I hurried under them, stepping on violets and wild onions, as spring birds sang.

The rolling rhythm of your descent pulled your mother down,

through pain and anger, past tears, into deep knowing.

The minutes shortened as she rocked you to Earth. Your father’s hands touched her power.

I watched her quiet solitude open a doorway for your quick arrival. 

She knew – you were close. The sun rose higher.

The time came. Finally, others understood, and your mother’s eyes burned clear

with sharp intent, a forceful gale of will that declared the moment.

Lights, hands, steady voices – a pause,

then the climb: head forward – deep groan – self and breath sacrificed – a channel stretched.

Then, rest. Your father held your mother’s hand. Then, the next push

that bulged and groaned and pulsed: blood and hope and promise, a whispered prayer

to your ancestors and descendants. At last, the zenith exertion:

the death of who your mother thought she was, the birth of who you are.

More hands, a twist of shoulder – a scream, splitting space-time,

echoing aeons of humans making their way to life –

and finally, your glorious dark hair breaking through in baptismal blood,

slippery body, plump and purple and pulsing, falling into cradle-arms.

The translucent blue cord was cut, but never the radiant rope of vibration

between you, your mother’s eyes, your father’s chest, everything.

Your cry, cosmic aria, collapsed the wave of uncertainty with sighs and joy and tears.

A flurry of flesh nestled you on your mother’s chest, in your father’s arms.

You came as divine gift of stars, strength, sunlight, stillness, spring.

In the quiet dimmed room after your birth, I looked at you and wondered, although I saw,

where you could have come from.

So perfect in your smallness, you drew a circle wide around all of us

who awaited you, fixed with love. Your cousin leapt in my womb.

You are fluent in the language of silence; you practice perfect presence.

You know what I do not remember, what I am taught again by your simplicity.

You are your mother’s hair, your father’s sternum, their eyes and skin,

your grandparents’ heart, your ancestors’ delight, your descendants’ life.

I hold you, messenger from beyond the veil – sacred guest – embodied promise.

A New Center

Until this past October, I always wanted my stomach to be smaller. My physical self-awareness has been characterized by the balance between Skinny and Fat, Acceptable or Not, Small or Big.

As a first-grader, lining up next to other girls, I took note of the way their bodies and my body fit into our uniform skirts. Some girls seemed barely able to keep their skirts up, they were so lithe and slender; others, whose shirts bagged a bit around the waistband, seemed to need some extra room. My belly wasn’t the biggest, nor was it the smallest, but I noticed that, depending on how I stood or sat or sucked in, I could fall on either side of the divide.

Looking back, I see a happy, healthy little girl whose eyes were so bright, no one was looking at her belly.

In junior high, I used to do two hundred crunches before bed each night, hoping to trim my tummy for that future occasion when I might bare some skin in front of my peers. The glances of guys and the acceptance of other young women – who, I presumed, would only want someone attractive near them – motivated my efforts.

Looking back, I see a twelve-year-old in the throes of early puberty, blossoming into a curvy woman. She is so tender and beautiful, she defies the dimensions of any midriff.

College brought new confidence in everything I was – that is, everything outside the solar plexus. I still did not ultimately trust myself; I could only trust others’ judgments of me. My core remained weak, and I only held criticism of its softness. I learned true vulnerability in the arms of my future husband. He felt the full circumference of my spirit and ever encouraged me to expand.

Months ago, something happened inside of me that brought fundamental change to my life. In darkness and mystery, in the very center of my being, a new life was born. He is still small enough to hold in my hands; I will have to wait until June or July to finally look into his eyes. The center of my world has shifted to rest on this child, my child, a person I have never even met but with whom I am already desperately in love. This recalibration of my consciousness colors everything differently.

My body has begun to follow ancient maps, written in a language I will never know, that direct the growth of my body as it makes way for this new life. The transformation has brought challenge, but has overwhelmingly beckoned my enchantment. The beauty of this evolution has redistributed the weight of importance in every part of me.

Namely, my stomach. I once longed for it to be small and flat. Now, I want the whole world to notice its protrusion! Once upon a time, I reflexively sucked in air when a friend reached for a hug; now, I stick out my middle in hope that someone will touch it and exclaim with excitement. I once worried about the ways my diet would improve or worsen my appearance; now, my concern is to increase the number of centimeters I measure so that my baby is healthy. For the first time, I am happy to take up space in this world because it is for such an evidently precious purpose.

What a shame that I have not always recognized that I take up space for a precious purpose: to walk the planet as a beautifully embodied, abundant gift that anyone should be grateful to receive.

Already, I have let old patterns slip into my passing thoughts. Will my uterus shrink quickly enough so I can fit properly in a bridesmaid gown? Will applying lotion daily be enough to prevent stretch marks? I am not yet perfect in my perception of myself. But I am trying to teach new habits through the marvel of this miraculous time. I proudly post pictures of my baby bump. I gently hold my stomach as I speak tenderly to my baby, to myself. I focus my questions on how I’m feeling, not how I think I’m looking, and determine my well-being according to this standard of health. I look at pictures of women who, standing courageously naked in the face of Judgment, bare their stretch marks and sagging breasts, their bony shoulders and knobby knees, their soft stomachs and big booties, their slender torsos and love handles, their straight lines and their curves, their breadth and their depth…and I take note that I am awed by their beauty. I rarely look long at what they may deem to be flaws. Instead, I am captivated by their radiant smiles, shining eyes, and the wonder of their whole being, rounded and full, taking up just the right amount of space. I can even begin to gaze at myself with such effortless grace.

And when my baby comes into the world, crying and longing for his mother, he will not notice that my belly is too big. He will nestle into the wonder of flesh against flesh, basking in the warmth of coming earth-side. He will find my receptive arms a perfect cradle, my breasts an ideal resting place, my belly the center of all comfort and care he has ever known. The balance between Acceptable and Not will be perfectly achieved in my relinquishment of striving for it. When my stomach eventually recedes to a newfound waistline, I wish for my ontological focus to expand indefinitely. The radical acceptance of Who I Am, for the sake of my child, myself, and the world, will be the self-awareness that centers me most fully. 

Lessons: To Be Human

I put to words some of my innermost fears. Then, I re-wrote the fears as hopeful invitations (below). I want to transmute the energy of my thoughts for my, and the world's, betterment.


Release the rigid thought that you are too small a part of the universe.

Open to the expansive, unfathomable realms of worlds you are.

Become someone who chooses your manifestation at each unfolding level.

Honor the common yearning for connection: to move at the pace of being human with other people.

Forgive yourself for thinking you fall short of your narrow, self-defined human standard.

Relinquish saying this: “I am not doing it right.”

Free yourself of the assumption that you have failed or will fail to be good.

False humility projects an environment that stretches only to the expanse you think you can be.

Live into harsh, frank, disappointing weakness.

By your inconsistency and inauthenticity, build a bridge to all other people.

Feel empowered to bare your vulnerability in small and big ways.

Welcome yourself into the possibility of belonging.