Spring is erupting in Ojai as I complete my January ritual of going through everything I own, letting go of outer (and inner) "stuff" that no longer serves me.
Spring is clearly beginning in Ojai. My body feels ignited by the energy of the new life erupting all around me. Yesterday the first fragile pink blossoms opened on the ancient peach tree just outside my desk window. This morning, the first of the daffodils at her feet raised their buttery brilliance!
The lush dark purple bearded iris and bright yellow oxalis are blooming around the west side of the big house. The huge acacia outside my own west windows blossoms flagrantly, bright as the sun. Flaming dark orange nasturtiums and some deep magenta daisy-like flowers are opening daily in my container garden. I pick small, radiant nosegays for the little blue glass vases on my altars and desk. Then, I make an almost horizontal arrangement of the irises to sit on my fire-stove during the warmth of the day. It gets moved in the evening when the chill is still deep enough to make a fire welcomed.
Afterward, out in the orchard, I gather blood oranges, tangelos and pixie tangerines for my ambrosial morning juice mix. From my baby vegetable patch I collect and wash red and green chard, purple kale, bok choy, mustard greens, arrugula and some fennel for salad making this evening. I am filled with joy and with gratitude for the bounty of this little Eden.
As elated as I am, I am also a little saddened. It feels way too soon for winter to be leaving. Too soon to be done with the chilly air. Too soon to let go of the brief, Zen-like spare ness of my so recently pruned back container garden. Just three weeks from being pruned back deeply, all the rose bushes are sending out abundant new shoots and baby red leaves. A few warm, sunny days after ten days of freezing nights and everything is burgeoning forth!
Yesterday I finished the last of my month long year-end/year-beginning doings. On my ladder, I vacuumed a year’s worth of dust, cobwebs and spider cocoons from each of the16 Spirit Mother Totems (2 and 3 foot tall crocheted fiber masks that I’ve created over the years) that hang up under the eaves around my studio protecting me and this sacred space. In between tending the masks and taking time-outs to be outside in the sun, I was gently pruning the dead edges and wiping a year’s worth of dust from each of the leaves on the two dozen plants that live in the studio.
With windows and door thrown wide to the sweet warm air, with finches, crows and hawks singing along with Jennifer Berezan’s incredible ReTurning CD, I was immersed in what I call tending-the-shrine. Cleansing, renewing, revealing, honoring the beauty of the spirits in these beings with whom I live.
This, always the grand finale to over a month of making my way through every thing in or on every cupboard, storage bin, file, shelf, drawer and hanger in my cottage. At this time of the year’s turning, just as I prune, cut back, trim and recycle everything in my little gardens, so I go through, prune, winnow and recycle everything in my possession.
There is something enormously freeing and exhilarating in this process. Living in such a small space (540 square feet with access to a shared 20 x 7 service porch of roofed but unenclosed storage) both requires and supports my need for staying current with my possessions and my life. If I don’t let go of “stuff” that’s no longer meaningful/useful to me, there is no space for anything new to come into my world. As I let go of all that no longer serves me, I am making room for newness. As I attend to this process outside of me, it always feels as though—by a kind of “contact magic”—I am going through a parallel process internally. The intensity of my dream life during this time seems to confirm that sense.
I am enormously grateful that I have been led by Spirit and my own sensibilities into such a simple and small-scale life. Imagining more space and more possessions feels overwhelming, burdensome and oppressive to me. When life was larger, I couldn’t manage it on my own—tending-the-shrine became work rather than a sacred and joy-filled time. It seems an extraordinary blessing to be responsible for and to such a small and manageable space and such a fairly limited number of possessions. I love being able to live on a scale that allows me to experience caring for my space and things as a sacred process. I treasure feeling nourished by that process and by this yearly clearing process.
I feel such a deep, profound sense of renewal at the culmination of this rather long and ceremonious time. I wander about the house and yards opening doors, opening drawers and drawing back curtains. Admiring my handiwork. Feeling relief, release, lightness of being. And, over it all, a pervading sense of readiness, of feeling “about to…” without having the faintest clue of “about to what!”
The moment feels open, both empty and pregnant. It is a time of surrendering into the unknown, the not-knowing place, the space of readiness for what is to come next without any idea or expectation of what that might be. It is a luminous threshold place in which I come to rest, to a full and complete stop after a “siege” of activity. I am content to read and nap full-time between my two-day-every-other-week workdays until the next step reveals itself or calls to me.
In this threshold time, I am filled with a sense of curiosity and wonder. And, I am still waiting to fully understand the portent of a magical experience I had this past month. One morning in the middle of this clearing process, while the windows and door were open, a large bird flew into my studio. Small birds—house finches, hummingbirds, white-crested sparrows—often fly into my house. I usually capture them by hand at a window, do Reiki with them to calm their terror and then release them outdoors (while containing my cat in the house!). But this was a very large bird!
As the bird flew counterclockwise around the studio, through the rafters, my kitty and I both were mesmerized! To see a young red-tail hawk circling inside my cottage took my breath away. My heart beat wildly as I watched my hand to my mouth, “oh-ing” with awe. Just as I thought to worry about how I’d be able to capture and release her, I began to whisper, “find the door, Honey, find the door!” She circled three times around the room and then out the door. I wept, ecstatic with the blessing of this wild creature’s visit.
Originally published in February 2002
