What the Earth Says

Hello and welcome to Spiritual Journey Thursday! Today we are gathering at Julianne's blog To Read To Write To Be where we are discussing the topic "new beginnings."

This is a great topic -- isn't every day a new beginning? I have gotten through many a difficulty in my life using the "one day at a time" adage. It helps me to not stray too far into my fears for the future or regrets over the past... just be here now. Let each moment be a beginning.

As many of you know, about two years ago I started playing the cello. A new beginning for sure! And what I've discovered through the process of learning and making mistakes and being humble is that living life as a beginner is a wonderful way to be present and open to my life and what the world has to offer. I've been beginning -- and beginning again -- a sort-of memoir/devotional about this -- how to live life as a beginner.

And here's the thing: now I am not a beginner any more at the cello. So I've been trying other new things: I enrolled in a drawing class! We'll see where that takes me.

our lake house... with newly
painted-by-me red door!

Also, Paul and I bought a lake house! It's at a small-ish lake (250 or so acres; 15 miles of shoreline) and a sweet, quiet community less than an hour from our home. We've long talked about a lake house, but always abandoned the idea (too much trouble, the expense, wouldn't we feel like we HAD to go, what about all the other places in the world we want to see?). We've watched many a Lake House Bargain Hunt show over the years. And then, after an early-morning moment on the Gee's Bend ferry, we knew it was time. We needed water in our lives. Relaxation. Seclusion. New adventures.

So, for the first-time ever, I am driving the truck with the boat on the trailer and backing it into the water. (It's harder than it looks!) I am bass fishing with a rod and reel I've never used before. (Fun!) It's a new beginning for us as we are seeing the light after 23 years of parenting and the youngest son this month entering his senior year. Not quite empty nest, but getting there!

It's a new beginning AND a return to something -- a return to US, to a way of life we enjoyed before we were parents.

It's wonderful, is what it is!

And you know what? It feels right and real, like we are in exactly the right place. And that got me thinking about this poem by William Stafford:

In Response to a Question

The earth says have a place, be what that place
requires; hear the sound the birds imply
and see as deep as ridges go behind
each other. (Some people call their scenery flat,
their only picture framed by what they know:
I think around them rise a riches and a loss
too equal for their chart – but absolutely tall.)

The earth says every summer have a ranch
that’s minimum: one tree, one well, a landscape
that proclaims a universe – sermon
of the hills, hallelujah mountain,
highway guided by the way the world is tilted,
reduplication of mirage, flat evening:
a kind of ritual for the wavering.

The earth says where you live wear the kind
of color that your life is (gray shirt for me)
and by listening with the same bowed head that sings
draw all into one song, joining
the sparrow on the lawn, and row that easy
way, the rage without met by the wings
within that guide you anywhere the wind blows.

Listening, I think that’s what the earth says.

William Stafford

The lake house, with Paul, is my new place. And all that place requires is that I be... me. The most open, vulnerable, listening, always-a-beginner me. (I'm also talking more about the lake and August and beginnings  -- with a poem-- over at Smack Dab in the Middle!) xo