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REFLECTIONS

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Well Keeper Reflections

Public·173 Well Keepers

Sarah-Jane


Reflections on the illusion of alone and gratitude for an open heart today.

 

During my night, I loved receiving an email from Sue Chickering as she “passed the mantle”. Sue’s presence remained with me today and shortly, I will connect with Elizabeth Davis. Sue’s still holding my left hand, my right hand reaches towards Elizabeth. This experience of human connection stands out for me from this day “tending the wellspring”.

 

Sue spoke in her reflections of a sense of being in a time of great peril and this collective experience of “tending” being a reminder that she was “not alone with this endeavour”. I too treasure this sense of shared awareness.

 

I’d planned to go and spend time at the community allotment I am part of in the village where I live. However the weather has been wild. So, abandoning my plans, I let the day take me. What “took” me was an on-going connection and conversation with all of you. As Sue said, “…alone with this endeavour” is not so. It's an illusion.

 

Perhaps this embodied experience today might contribute in a small way to restoring the reality of our human connection - it remains intact in other-than-human beings.

 

An unexpected ordinariness to my day unfolded sweetly. A welcome gentleness permeated my little cottage within the stormy context of hail and gale. I had space to be with the recent death of a beloved Aunt, my Mother’s sister. Both my Mother and her sister had dementia in their later years. I’m the eldest in my maternal line now.

 

A Mary Oliver poem came to me “In Praise of Craziness of a Certain Kind”. It resonates with respect to my Aunt, and also I realised, with respect to finding my place in relationship to aspects of craziness I experience in the world in these days.

 

I share the poem in a spirit of care and kindness; tending if you will, as best we can,  what’s left of what we’ve been gifted in this beautiful Earth body of ours. May my heart stay open in these times. My Aunt’s did and I deeply honour her.

 

In Praise of Craziness of a Certain Kind ~ Mary Oliver

 

On cold evenings

My Grandmother,

with ownership of half her mind –

the other half having flown back to Bohemia –

 

spread newspapers over the porch floor

so, she said, the garden ants could crawl beneath,

as under a blanket, and keep warm,

 

and what shall I wish for, for myself,

but, being so struck by the lightning of years,

to be like her with what is left, that loving.

Unknown member
Mar 29, 2024

Thank you Sarah-Jane for being the original well keeper.  You gave this community a name and a way of understanding our work. And you have held this vigil faithfully for many years. I am so glad to be in this steady flow side by side, a bit crazy, always.

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