All winter under a white shawl of snow and cold Mother Earth’s dreams kept her buried in warmth below the frost line. The line is gradually melting away and I feel her stir beneath my feet. Her deep softness rising. All of Mother Earth’s children are opening. Our brothers and sisters living in nature remember the gift of opening is to let light and warmth out as much, maybe even more, as it is to let it in. Spring, the season for our deep softness to rise and shine.
Category: Nature
Spring Heraldry Poem
On this, the calendars last day of winter,
my glance is drawn toward the bouncing crab apple branches to my right.
They’re laden with a feast of red wrinkled berries for a winged-one.
I saw the round bird’s gray-brown feathers with warm orange under parts flutter joyfully by.
On wings of anticipation the migration prayer has been consummated.
Springs ambassador has returned!
The vernal song hibernating within us is aroused.
“Cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up”! The Robin sings.
On this, the calendars first day of spring.
American Robin photo by Dave Menke- US Fish and Wildlife (public domain)
Seed Haiku
Small seeds of sweetness
Push through the hardness of life
Proliferate love.
Holy Hive
Reluctantly, I turn up the edge of my wool hat, exposing an ear’s tender thin skin to the air’s frosty bite. I feel the white flesh turning pink then bright red as the sharp prickle travels down deeper and further into the ear tissue. I momentarily suspend my breathing as I firmly press the naked ear to the hive wall. Sealing out all the noise I can, hoping to funnel in the familiar soothing hum of the hive, hinting that winter’s wickedness hasn’t desecrated the hives holiness.
Early on in our beekeeping venture, these late-winter checks filled me with strong worry. Six years and four hives later, my faith and trust in our ability to keep bees alive over winter has grown, but with the abundance evil’s rising against the bee, I still rely heavily on God’s ear hearing the hum of my prayers.
One of the biggest contributors to a hive’s winter survival is having ample food stores. Bees create a substance in the hive known as beebread. The secret recipe is a mixture of honey, pollen and bee saliva. A process of fermentation breaks down the pollen’s protein which is indigestible in its natural state. Beebread is an invaluable high-energy food source.
Beebread is also known as “food of the Gods”. How appropriate! A bee’s life work is creating a space to unite the gifts of light with the gifts of darkness. They are Creator’s original light workers! Bees show us that when we bring our Spirit’s light into our soul’s darkness, we can make a honey of a life.
May you receive honey’s sweet sacrament. Take communion from the buds and blooms of Creator’s Divinity.
Blessed be thy bee.
Holy is thy hive.
Old Life
They came before the sunbeams pierced the darkness. Two sets of heart-shaped foot prints lead to, around and then away from the small hills of corn I placed at the woodland’s edge, an offering to the wild things to gather strength and sustenance during an extended period of subzero temperatures. No remnants of the corn’s golden shell remain. To see my small hills of goodwill consumed fills my heart with joy.
From the size of the tracks, I decide it’s a doe and her off-spring from last year. Others have come, too; a rabbit, a field mouse, and several crows but it’s the deer tracks that take hold of my imagination. It’s safe for me to assume the doe is eating for two or three. The burden of nourishing the new life in her womb and her own life is greatest at this time of year. The shrubs and forages they have been eating over the long winter are depleted and spring growth hasn’t begun. It’s truly a time of life or death for some in the herd.
Soon her instincts will cause her to drive off the yearling. She does this to focus all her energy on raising this year’s vulnerable fawn(s). The yearling’s old life will come to an abrupt end. I’ll probably see it wandering around the fields looking lost and confused for a few weeks. Independence will come at a high price for some, crossing roads safely is a skill taught by experience. Others will adapt well to this time of transition, venturing out into a new way of living without hesitation, being an example of gentle strength and resiliency for all of us.
The thoughts of the big changes ahead for the yearling stayed with me as I walked on. The enduring trust the doe placed in her instincts is indomitable. She has clear knowledge that it is a lesson she can’t teach her yearling. Trusting its instincts is something the yearling can only learn by being driven off to live a new way. Nature reminds me of life’s continual cycle of renewal. Harsh as that may be at times, life never gets old.
As the years pass, I am beginning to understand that life doesn’t grow old. I do. And if the aliveness in this old life dies away, I will find a new way to live alive.
Note: The photo in the featured image is of an unusually friendly yearling that seemed to find comfort hanging out in our yard and around the horses last summer.
Beautiful Beat
This happens frequently when I’m driving on my morning school bus route. As I head East, I watch in awe as the sun slowly awakens. Brilliant hues of pink, purple and orange peek over the night’s black blanket with blinks of hope and promise for the day ahead. It’s difficult sometimes to draw my eyes away from its radiant beauty. My first thought is, “I need to take a picture of this!” I want to remember this beautiful sight and share it with everyone I know! But of course, I can’t because I’m driving—a school bus.
I found a better way to capture the moment. I open my heart’s lens and let it focus on the beauty before me. In long slow breaths, I inhale the sunrise’s hope and promise and drop it into my heart, the one place where the colors will never fade and at a moment’s thought, the beautiful feeling can be be retrieved. Making every heartbeat a Kodak moment I share with the world.
Passing Through
As suddenly as it began, the mesmerizing winter scene before my eyes ends. Without warning, a flurry of fluffy snowflakes descends from a lone grey cloud hanging in a motionless sky. Delicate snowflakes by the thousands gracefully float through the air like tiny parachutes. Their journey, guided by the forces of nature, has brought them to rest over everything in the landscape.
Having surrendered to the wind’s whim, some have come to rest on my outstretched hand. As I watched each disappear into my skin, I thought about their journey. How the close of one passage through this world opens up infinite passages to enter the next way through. The snowflake now, along with me, continues on in another form from seen to unseen. Awareness— being the sacred observer of life— gives us a way to join our external and internal journeys. In those passing moments we feel complete.
These poignant encounters with nature are moments our awareness can inspire us to plug into that source energy. Source energy is never not connecting with us. Allow your attention to be captured by the power of enchantment. Start now. We are only here in passing.
As suddenly as it ends, it begins again.
Cruel Cold
Old man winter has given us quite the roller coaster ride this year to say the least! Temperatures plummeted to below zero for over a week, reaching a low of -30 several times, and then rose to the high 40’s in two days bringing thick fog. It hung like a heavy wet curtain over the sun and the spirit of folks. Freezing rain and a dusting of snow followed. The mercury once again is hovering below zero. Our coat hanger is laden with coats, thick and thin. Each morning the family navigates through mounts of weather ready footwear strewn near the door.
Old man winter is a slippery fellow. Can’t say that everyone is thrilled with the chill. We don’t have a choice except to weather the weather. We do have a choice as to the disposition in which we do it. The excerpt below from my book, Sweet Wisdoms, gives you my perspective on how I mentally shovel through the challenges of a Wisconsin winter.
Cruel Cold
We are experiencing below-zero temperatures with the wind chill here in Wisconsin. It’s freeze- your-nose-hairs-together and turn-your-nose whiskers-frosty kind of weather. As I make my morning round of chores, I’m constantly pulling my hat down and my long underwear up! You can feel the landscape’s bones on these sharp cold days. I delight in the simplicity of winter—stay warm. Bitter cruel cold, you can’t make me a bitter cruel cold person.
Ride the Wind
Wind’s gift to us is movement. On days like today with sustained wind speeds between 20- 30mph and gusts of 50mph, its will to remain in motion is taking with it all that isn’t held down or onto. Its willpower is blowing wild and free over the open land. Add to that a 20-degree temperature and the attitudes of folks drop swiftly into negative territory on their gusts of disgust. They fret and fuss over the slightest exposure to the wind’s elemental power to create sacred motion.
Nature adapts and flows with the windy weather. Birds are staying perched in the cover of Spruce trees and my horses are assuming the sturdy, butt to the wind, position. I like the raw edge of a strong wind. It commands a keen awareness of body and mind. We don’t pay much attention to air until we feel it like when our breath is restricted by a cold or illness. Wind’s Spirit forces us to feel what goes unseen and unnoticed. The air is showing itself today and people are taking notice.
Our movement too can be blustery, messing up our tidy plans. Forced action like a wild wind can tangle, tatter and tear. Sometimes there’s no stopping where we are going. We have to let the Spirit of the wind carry us—surrender—to freedom’s rough and tumble ride. If we can do that we are carried to our destination.
To make it through the next wind advisory, hold onto your hat and your heart. Wait-a-day or two, the winds of change will change, everything in sacred motion, even the wind.
Ever Green
Crumbling colorless leaves blanket the ground in a thick layer, giving our woodsy path a spongy surface for my boots to land. Wet from the steady cold rain, some leaves cling to my soles like a frightened child’s arms locked around its mother’s neck. Familiar shapes of Maple, Oak and Poplar now unrecognizable, a few weeks ago their flaming colors burnt up the skies’ blue. Then November’s wind of change came blowing the fire out of the trees spreading it onto the ground. The brilliant sparks in hues of orange, red and yellow exploding into the air, landing on the forest floor like confetti, signaling the end of fall’s magical celebration of transition.
Distorted by the elements, our woodsy trail is now littered with the colorless season of death and dying. I love the earthy smell during this time of transition. It focuses my senses on the renewal and not the rot. Transitions can make us feel like that —colorless—empty. It’s in these moments that I look toward the Evergreens, White Pine especially, my favorite variety.
Seeing their burst of green on late autumn’s dull brown landscape always brightens my spirits. When winter’s white blanket is drawn up close over the sleeping countryside, those scattered patches of green give me strength to endure and hope for the future. Evergreens face the fierce north wind and heavy snow burden of Wisconsin’s winter storms without complaint. If only we could offer forgiveness so easily to our burdens and have faith in our spiritual roots to hold strong against all those things that make us squint.
Two lungs full of a Pine’s clean fresh scent washes the dead right out of winter. I admire the Evergreen family and its unique ability to grow green through all the seasons. How splendid that must be to pass through all of life’s seasons feeling ever-green. It’s no wonder that the designated color of our heart chakra is green. Green energy is the healing force abundant in nature. Our hearts feel peaceful when we connect with nature’s green world. That color carries with it soothing, calm energy. Like the Evergreen, we often use our hearts to shield us from the world’s harshness, creating an interior privacy screen when we need to go within, holding inside healing images contained in nature’s beauty. At times like a breeze stirring through those Pines, I imagine my heart whispering, “Let the flow of life continually fill you.”
Sweet Wisdoms 