Beginning Again: Rooted
Beginning again. Pausing. Rising and falling in ancient rhythms.
Stopping. Silence. The lull of the earth’s rotation.
The waves, moving in, moving out. The sun and moon orbiting, warming, pulling.
Beginning again. Loose. Languid.
Receiving. As the world turns so do you.
Swimming in pools of honey. Swimming in liquid sunlight.
Clouds scattering across the sky, moving with abandon, shape shifting.
A bear hibernating in the clouds, not yet ready to begin again. A seed sprouting tiny green buds.
Beginning again.
Remember your role on the grand stage of life.
Who are you today? What part are you playing?
Let it go, let it fall away until you are just you.
Simple you. The you that has always been there, waiting to become.
Becoming the core, the acorn, growing down to meet yourself.
And now, beginning again.
Still. Stillness. Quiet.
Hand to your heart, coffee grounds lingering in the filter.
Deep inhale, the taste of hot liquid, the heavy cup, the sound it makes when you set it on the old scarred table.
Old, ancient, harkening back to its days in the forest.
Forest rhythms, they are with you always.
Right outside your window. Right under your notebook.
The pen flows across the page keeping time with the rhythm of your heart. Beating in a way only it knows how to beat.
Breathing with the trees, rooted.
Rooted, even though you rarely think of yourself this way.
But rootedness doesn’t mean confinement.
The bird is rooted too, returning to the same tree for a season or a lifetime. Teaching you a new definition for rootedness.
Rooted in the moment. Fully present to the experience whether bird or woman. Committed wholeheartedly like a tree commits, no other way to live.
And so it is for the birds, squirrels, deer and other beings in the scrubby oak landscape right outside your door.
A tree never feels out of place. Never feels like it doesn’t belong. The best kind of rootedness.
Beginning again. Rooted.
(Lately I’m sometimes called to write more personal blog posts that originate in my journal. This is one of them. It was inspired by Christine Valters Painter’s poetry, and is a sort of bookend to a blog post I wrote early in January: How to Begin Again).