slowing down

and kidney stew

Yesterday morning the mountain disappeared.

As the snow and rain conjured their weatherways towards these lands, white plumes from the firmament, like living beings of another world, shrouded the mountain so completely that her face only emerged in momentary, majestic glimpses, between cloud and light, like an untouchable crystalline chieftess overseeing her village.

And so complete was the surrounding white plumage, that it seemed we were living at the top of the world. A cloud village. Suspended. Surrounded. Drinking in that spectrum of light, made possible only through the union of snow and sun and mist. Feeling the immensity of that silence, the totality of that solitude.

(Cottontail rabbits in the brush. Twittering songbirds. Winds from the west.)

I haven’t been writing as much lately, you may have noticed, as I am heeding the guidance of a potent friend and medium, Solea Anani. As I sat behind a coffee shop in town, shivering and mesmerized, she and I dove into the mythic and gathered medicines that were notably personal and graciously helpful. Like, put your life force into fewer things, she said, consolidate your offerings, minimize your externalization. Transform yourself within the privacy of your chrysalis. Trust in the simplicity and in that which cannot be changed.

So I am consolidating and grounding, focusing on fewer things to offer the community, while letting the inner works cook and alchemize and transform this body-mind into something new and unforeseen. I am so continuously humbled by life, by its enormity and endless evolutionary invitations, that I find myself surrendering more and more fully to that which I do not know; allowing that spacious lack of definition be a fertile ground for new revolutions, new embodiments of truth, new curiosities. And while my heart says “service!”, my guidance is encouraging me to slow down and embrace privacy as a means to root inner transformations in a way that is aligned with the rhythms of Mother Earth.

A small group of us have continued to meet weekly, visualizing as a group, the world and future we want to see ~ themes like the global reconnection of water, the feeling of trust, living in a village dancing in the nucleus of Creation. I use sound, visualization and meditation to anchor in our process. The altar carries sea shells, corn pollen and rose petals. A feather. Some crystals. A candle. I burn Jose’s manifestation paper at the end and plant the crystal in the ceremonial fire pit until our next week’s gathering.

I have been writing a few short pieces this past week to offer here on this platform, pieces like “purification of memory pt. 2: the answering call of the cattails” and “belonging: the sound of a flock of crows”, but as the freshness of a new day arrives, I always feel inspired to write something new.  So… I wrote something new, and now here is something old, something about crows.

“Once, when the feeling of floating filled my being with such isolation, confusion and despair, I drove up the side of a mountain in Arizona, parked near some soft deer trail and hiked in. I walked right into a flock of crows and in the knowingness of my bones, I laid down and let my eyes flicker between the tears and the surrender.

‘what's done
is done’
is not the truth.

‘what's done’
is doing
what it couldn’t
when it happened.

‘what’s done’
is alive
and living
in the spaces
between
your dreaming
and your being,
waiting

for the blessed
Grace
of your awareness
to greet its
genesis, and
cosmology, its
living morphology
in your bones.

‘what’s done’
is dancing
in your shadow
until you
acknowledge

its invitation
to embrace

And as I laid there on the red earth, my eyes flickering, gathering flashes of sunlight and flapping wings, the sound of feathers beating all around me pulled me deep into the earth until I heard a voice that said, ‘You belong to us.’”

A bag of curry powder just exploded under my foot and Amara is now making sand paintings on the wooden floor. Her fingers are covered in turmeric gold and the floor is decorated with the long lines of her fingers, moving in all directions, through the curry powder. I go shake out the rug and hang it in a tree.

Two weeks ago we butchered one of our goats. This was a first for me. My partner didn’t want me to be there when he shot the goat, but I, of course, wanted to be there because I was there when the goat was born. I watched him fall out of his mother’s womb and I remember that surreal feeling in the air, how the world all around us seems to go still, evading time and stretching space. I think it must be like that for all creatures when their birthing happens: the world between worlds emerges subtly, for a moment, while a new being enters this earthly realm.

The day Scotty shot the goat, I hadn’t slept very well the night before and so I allowed him to do it without me, as he preferred, while I rested in our wood-fired, lavender-filled bathtub.

I didn’t hear the shot, but I sensed a shift. I wrapped myself up in a warm coat and walked up in the snow where Scotty was gutting the animal. The brilliant red blood on white snow. The steam pouring out of the body. The other goats, seemingly unperturbed, nibbling away at their hay.

Eventually Scott passed me the goat’s heart, which I was very honored and also curious to hold. I instinctively stuck my finger into a major artery. I was surprised by how hot it was on the inside! It almost seemed like it would burn my finger. The soul of the animal was distinctively departed and I felt good about that. A quick and painless death in the snow, eating alfalfa. A good life in the wilderness, frolicking to heart’s content, eating balsamroot, serviceberry and osha leaves.

I cooked up the heart a few days later, together with the kidneys, in a flavorful and slightly spicy stew that fed five of us.

Winter has officially arrived. The forecast calls for a nine degree night in the near future. Chopping wood never ends. We have a new guest living on the land with us. We call him Great Grandma Ali Baba. He is 18 and Amara decidedly loves him. It is amazing the difference one person can make. A little more breathing room. Scott is building a fire outside to cook some goat meat and I am recovering from a very busy, notably magical, musical evening with our friends Mama Lingua last night.

Even though this season often beckons us to travel and move and shop and socialize, I hope you have a few moments here and there to drop into the quietude and simplicity, to remember this miracle of life we get to experience each day, and to give thanks to all the forces of nature that make it possible for us.

Blessed be ~