Carrying All the Things | The Wild Mind Journaling Project | Day 1
* Journaling activity from Rising Appalachia, Patreon.
It’s not the weight you carry but how you carry it—books, bricks, grief.
It’s all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you could not, and would not put it down.
So I went practicing / have you noticed ?
How I linger… to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world that are kind, and maybe also troubled
Roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves
Foxes in their little den.
- Mary Oliver
Journaling micro-discipline / prompt:
How are you practicing putting down some weight and opening to this world?
Is there some way you/we could let more beauty in ?
One breath... two... three... deep and slow — sometimes before I even open my eyes, when there is still no time, no dawn or daylight yet to notice, this moment before the birth of morning when I am still a seed. And slowly the shallow breath of sleep becomes the deeper pulls of wakefulness, and I blink my eyes open, stretching like an amoeba across the sheets, limbs elongating, fingers and toes reaching.
I might also smile, because These Days I’m not getting up in a rush of propulsion to wake children and make breakfasts and pack lunches and ask them nine times to get cleaned and dressed and brushed and out the door in time for their ride to school so I can then get myself cleaned and dressed and brushed and out the door to my eleventy other commitments. Yes, there are positive sides to These Days too. Observing those B-sides helps me put down the weight of it all. Of all this change. That’s really what it is, right? Change. Transformation. Unexpected and unbidden, as it most often is. Change constantly foisted on the unwitting. What you least expect when it's least expected. An improvised do-over. A hard reboot. A harvesting. A reaping. A replanting. Resilience in the making. I reject the phrase “new normal,” because not once has anything truly ever been “normal.” Normal to whom? Normalcy is a narrow determination with as much ignored assumption behind it as any other -ism. So let’s label These Days what they really are—big, juicy moments of personal and collective Revolution (which, Franti reminds us, never comes with a warning). So I embrace the moment and ride the waves of change because if I don’t, I drown. And so, yes, I might also smile.
My legs kick away cotton-cool covers and swing over the bed, one foot, two, soft but solid on the floor. Three more breaths … and I stand to greet the day. My morning sadhana has begun. If I’m lucky and up early enough, the rest of the house (two teens, another middle-aged adult, and two senior furballs) will remain asleep while I perform my morning ritual. It includes copious amounts of coffee, so after a pee and a mouth wash, I grind beans, heap scoops, pour water, press “on,” and walk through the glass door to the back deck as the coffeemaker steams and gurgles my morning potion into creation.
I look across the mile-wide valley that we and dozens of other woods and river folk call home. I am greeted by the sprawling arms of redwood trees, nodding bay tops, and leaf-flashing poplars. I take it in, gazing over roofs and vineyards toward the hills on the other side, seeing the fog curl through the lap of the valley intertwined with ribbons of smoke, creating a single layer of haze that I can both see and smell. The air is tinged with what might be the scent of a harmless campfire, but which is rather evidence of last week’s huge wildfire that raged through my community, the remains of which is still burning in the woods just two miles away. But after 11 days of evacuation, our home, our neighbors’ homes, this valley and it’s flora and fauna, all still stands, touched only by ash and embers rather than flame, thanks to the efforts of a whole lot of folks both officially and unofficially pledged to protect this land, these dwellings, and their inhabitants.
My overflowing love for the majestic towering trees that define this landscape and our relationship is what helps me put down the weight today — How I linger… to admire, admire, admire / the things of this world that are kind, and maybe also troubled — appreciating this landscape so close to burning, yet still alive and thriving, covered in a light dusting of cinder-snow and burnt leaves, a reminder of what the wind carried. Appreciating those smoldering redwoods over the hill which inherently have the capacity to adapt and grow back stronger after fire and will prove their historical and ancestral resilience once again. Showing us, too, the way.
Until and beyond then, gratitude is the love is the healing is the opening is the release is the ultimate grace of existence and carrying of all the things.