Birthing Soul

The heart of darkness

I went exploring today, taking advantage of the long evening hours of slowly fading sunlight (it's just now completely dark at 10 pm). In exploring I realized that my beloved little town can be divided up into quadrants.

We don't have any railroad tracks, but we do have a main highway splitting the town in half. One side is the old part of town, and a lot more depressed economically. The side I live on is the bustling middle-class family side, complete with 2 fountain parks with zillions of bikini clad kids running wildly through them during the summer months, a playground every few blocks, and pockets of untended forests and still-wild creeklands with dancing, sparkling streams that empty into the large river just to the south. I just recently discovered  a jungle of a forest neighboring my apartment complex - wild, dark and untamed. When you step into it you can completely forget that there is a town around you, you become so surrounded by the wild enchantment of the place.

And then there's the other side. The hoity-toity yuppy side on the south side of the river that slices the town in half yet again. This side has a completely different feel;  manicured and luxurious, extremely beautiful upon first look. Instead of playgrounds there are pools on every block (not a common thing in chilly Oregon), exactly zero play structures, and hundreds of multi-million dollar houses bordering the golf course, and perching on the top of the steep riverfront embankment. Now, we've got some nice half-million dollar houses on our side, but these are mansions, all of them. It's not your normal upper-middle class suburbia, it's uppity-ville. It's the perfect picture of luxurious, ego-driven success. And it makes me want to vomit.

Driving over there to look at a condo that was up for sale, I first felt amazed and awed. But slowly I noticed another feeling... a sort of suffocation from the overly manicured scene. I felt out of place and like I would have to live up to a certain uppity standard if I were to live there. And what would they think of our (soon to arrive) skunk and my brown-skinned children? Part of me doesn't give a damn what they think, but another part would sense the condescending looks (something I don't feel at all on this side of town, which has a rich spectrum of skin-color and social status).

I went over purposely looking for any patches of "wild," like what we have on the north side of the river. There were none. Not even a patch. All the bushes were neatly in a row, pruned and manicured, conforming to the hoity-toity vision of beauty. All cultured and socialized, with no hint of wildness. All the water fountains were strictly for viewing pleasure only, not for little kids to run wildly through.

Feeling suffocated and closed in, with still some waning rays of dusklight, I headed over the highway across from uppity-ville, but still on the south side of the river. Instantly we were in the trees, wild trees that weren't planted in a line. With wild brush and foliage underneath. The light from the 9 pm sunset glowed pink and orange around us, but when you looked into the wildness of the forest, it was dark. A sort of delicious darkness - foreboding but enchanting. The kind of darkness you look into and your chest constricts, your breath catches in your throat and your heart skips a beat. The kind of darkness that beckons, and though you are scared to death, you have to follow it. It's full of mystery, it's full of life, and maybe even some wild animals. It's full of soul, something the other side was completely devoid of.

Seeing the different aspects of my town, and being a symbolic thinker, not to mention constantly studying archetypal psychology, it makes me wonder if I have the same quadrant inside of me: a poor, unforgotten side, and a bustling, growing side rich with schools and playgrounds and children...but also a hoity-toity, condescending, better-than-thou aspect, contrasted by the unmanicured, overgrown, dark, fiercely natural and wild side. Yes, all of it somehow mirrors my inner landscape.

Still, if you ask me, trees do NOT like to be planted in a row!

The spectrum of life

The moon wanes into darkness as the faintest inklings of spring peek from behind a shroud of frosty greyness. The cycles of the earth juxtaposed against each other, one a decline into death, the other a birthing into life, both striking powerful chords within me. My own body is animated with the dark energies of my own new moon and I feel deep reverberations of the dark goddess within me.  Shedding the hope of the fertile phase and relishing her own destructive force, my body exudes a Kali-esque power. But the energies of death and destruction are far from lifeless; they are very much alive, pulsing with a primal darkness. The kind of darkness you find in the fertile black earth; a darkness imbued with anticipation, a death that is already reverberating with life.

It's almost as if the cycle of life and death and the energy and power associated with it manifests itself as a continuum, similar to the spectrum of light. The parts of the spectrum we can see, we associate with light, and therefore with life. This is the bright, topside world, thriving with spring and summertime vitality. But as you near the end of visible light, it's not that light ceases to exist. We just can't see it with our normal eyes. In a similar way, the death aspect of any cycle, far from being dead, is pulsing with a different aspect of the spectrum of life. A dark and powerful energy that is more felt than seen.

And then the colors of each cycle - whether springtime green, or summertime blue, or autumn clothed in vibrant oranges and red - interact and play on all the other cycles we are experiencing at that moment like overlapping circles of light. Each cycle - be it the seasons, or the moon, or our own inner cycle - adds its own unique and vibrant signature to the mix. Brilliant life delicately dances with resonating death causing a most magnificent light show to those with eyes to see its beauty.

So as the moon wanes into her dark phase and spring tentatively begins her crescendo of life, as my body weaves her own cycles into the fabric of time, I will just be in this moment, with all the colors of life swirling around me. They say Life is beautiful. Indeed it is!

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Sundrops and moonbeams

I sit in my corner; my thinking corner; my reading corner in my worn blue rocking chair. Autumn sunshine and a rare blue October sky drench me through the cornered window panes with streams of warm autumnness. The last of the remaining yellow leaves rustle crisply in the strangely warm air, dangling on near naked branches.

I take a break from my book and my thoughts to drink in the beautiful feeling... I watch the way the sunlight happily dances on my skin, how it makes it shimmer like a thousand tiny rainbows, how it whispers and twinkles through my hair till it shines like spun gold.

Yes, in the sunshine I feel invigorated. Even while all of nature around is cycling into her graceful death-dance, I am at peace, fully alive. Sure, I'll cycle with her as the days grow painfully short, and as the last vibrant show of radiant leaves and brilliant fall colors fade into months of mucky greyness. But today, I drink in the last burst of life, savoring the sun drenched moment.

The full moon rises tonight through my corner windows, leaving my room - and my corner - glistening with a soft silvery glow. My little ones wave goodnight to La Luna, wishing they could touch her, but instead settle for blowing kisses.

Not everything is best seen in the brilliant light of the sun. Some things, the underside of things need the shadowy, soft light of a moon drenched window. And still other things need the drizzle of a gray morning, or the raw power of a dark stormy night.

So I'll let my soul dance with the changing of the seasons in the graceful dance of death, through the sun splashed shortening October days, through the moonlit nights, through the crunchy leaves that smell like childhood wonder. And I'll dance into days of drizzle and darkness to see things that are only visible in shrouds of gray.

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Celebration of Spring

I woke up the other morning to the unfamiliar sound of the chirping of birds. In the soft blue light of barely dawn I savored the sweet song and my sleepy heart skipped with anticipation of springtime till I drifted back to happy sleep with images of blue sky and flowers skipping through my dreams.

The next day, a chilly, gray afternoon, I ventured out of the house to take the kids on a walk to the park. It didn't feel much like spring. Technically we still have another month of winter. But there were signs that spring was pushing back the winter’s cold blanket of darkness and death. Daffodil buds had speared their way through the mucky black earth, ready any moment to explode in glorious triumph, testifying like miniature golden trumpets that the darkness has lost its hold. They are the first signs of spring. The rest won’t be far behind!   

When the first pink buds on the trees burst into vibrant life, something changes in my heart. Even the anticipation of that burst awakens something in me as I come out of the dark cave of an ever-so-grey Northwest winter. The first sign of clear blue sky and sunshine on my face sparks giddy happiness, laughter and picnics in the park and hopeful anticipation of the bright days of summer.   

Springtime is so much more than merely the turning of a season. It’s a feeling. The kind of happy feeling you get when you’ve driven all night and through the darkness comes a perfect sunrise. Or the feeling of anticipation of a first kiss and the giddiness of new love. It’s the feeling of new life, and the celebration of new beginnings. There is a reason why the animals give birth during this time. There is a reason why love flourishes and like in Bambi, we are all guilty at one time or another of head-over-heals twiterpation. Springtime opens our hearts to love, or maybe it’s the other way around.   

So as the earth awakens and blooms in all her pristine glory, I will treasure her beauty and drink in her vibrant life - allowing it to awakens inside me as well. And I’ll treasure the friendships and love that grace my life like the delicate buds of the flowering pink trees; knowing there are times for blooming and times for pruning, all part of the ebb and flow of life.

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