You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘light’ tag.
We give thanks for the daily gift of Warming and pray to remain open to its life-bestowing nurturance—Within it we thrive and share with others.
Happy Thanksgiving
Do treat yourself to a solitary walk during dusk-light—waning effulgence, snuffed out by shadows.
Listen to whispers of November’s tattered yellows and browns and hesitant reds, strewn along wooded trails and massed against curbs. Be startled by a burning bush still gripping its scarlets.
See thinning banks of Missouri honeysuckle revealing the serpentine curve of the limestone creek bottom, its waters reduced to a trickle that pool in crevices. Above, ache with the naked branches snaking down like hag’s hair. Watch a gray squirrel dodge its tail scuttling up a tree.
Touch three hand-sized-leaves of the London plane tree, tinged with a yellow blush, clenching the end of a solitary branch.
Feel winds clicking the mottled husks of a dogwood tree, stripped of its wine-crimson foliage and berries.
Such moments evoke deep smiles. We are not alone.
At 7:15 A.M., I woke with this restoration dream:
I am alone, following a wooded trail, patterned by shadows of overhanging leaves. Up ahead, through the trees, appears to be an abandoned structure. As I get closer, I note its sides missing, some of its timbered posts, charred. I step inside. Pine needles and other tree debris litter the earthen floor. I look up. Tiles of mud-colored turtles, some of them cracked, adorn the ceiling. It feels like there has been a fire in the past.
This glimpse into my psyche suggests destruction, neglect, the process of rot already eating at the heart of what was once a structure, built and used by others, perhaps for rituals to honor the Sacred. Mud-colored turtles, the ceiling’s adornment, must have played a part in their rituals. Being a water creature, the turtle suggests creation and the after-life; it symbolizes longevity, order, and protection, there being much evidence of such found among Native American tribes.
My present study of the Ioway tribe in nineteenth-century Missouri may have influenced my Dreamer to incorporate turtles in this dream, as well as my wonder of the after-life and how we will experience the peoples of the world, in their otherness.
It’s comforting to know such a structure exits in my psyche where I can go anytime and restore it, with help.
With the psalmist, I pray, Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor, in vain. (27:1)
Heart Whisperings 