Holding the mantle last Sunday and stepping out on the land for a week of questing and fasting. I step back in as others pick up the mantle of holding for today.  Mine was a week of letting go of my work in the world and being held, being listened to and listening deeply.  As Rumi says of fasting:  “We are lutes, no more, no less.  If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music.  If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.”  And many songs and truths came from my lungs and from the land.

For me, especially by day 4, I felt my body melting into a state of grace.  My own bodily boundaries merging with/blurring into those of the trees, the wind, and the spring ephemerals.  We bring back to council our stories from the land as medicine for the world.  And I brought back stories, encounters, insights.  But just as there is so much more than we can see, there is so much more than we can say.  There is so much more than our stories, and it is that MORE that I brought back from the land.  It is that more that I want to continue to embody and carry in the light that I shine upon all I do in the world.  That more that will be felt above/below/beyond the seeing, the feeling, and all my words.

Like love and trust and knowing, they are so much deeper and vaster than words.  Let us inhabit that world of truth that lies between and beyond our daily acts and daily lives.  A place radiant with love and grace.  May it be so.