I do love how when I am setting an intention for a day of deep listening dreams tend to come in with such sweet gems.  Last week when I was going to take myself out onto the land for guidance about tension in a women’s quest council of which I am part, in my dream I found a young African-American boy sitting in our council, looking up at his mother saying “why do these women seem to want to leave no stone unturned—it makes such a mess.  Can’t they just leave them be and enjoy their beauty!”  Well that young wise sage was in my dream again last night, this time picking up the stones!!!  But with such reverence.  It reminded me of that saying “when love is a verb and not just a feeling” the way he held and conversed with that stone!  That image echoed throughout my day. 

Often during my time of Well Keeping and silence I am more keenly aware of the fact that I live within a sentient geography.  I am of the landscape and converse with its more-than-human inhabitants.  And today I had that conversation flowing from such a place of loving and tending.  I felt awash in a mist of conversation and belonging.  The oxygen I breath has passed through ancestors and trees, mountain lions and lichen, birds and the sea. Yes, I am of this earth. 

I am so grateful that I am rooted to this land I live on, the soil, the morning birdsong, the tall ash, and my grandmother maple tree that I visit regularly. Stories of other days of deep listening still echo on the wind, and there is a knowing deep in my bones that I am being breathed by the bellows of geological time. Slowing down is such an important habit to tend, and in that stillness I am humbled by the knowledge that I am but a single cell in service to this complex organism we call earth. I have gratitude for this brief but privileged blink of an eye I call my life. As I touch into the stillness of my soul I feel my individuality retreat and I become so much more expansive and at one with it all. And today it was clear to me that there is no “out there”.  We are all kin, and we are all entangled in the mystery.  May we live courageously with love and hope amid and for it all. 

With deep gratitude for this vessel of Well Keeping. xo nancy