Winter in Ojai–a paradoxical intimate braiding of dying away and being reborn
–perfectly mirrors my process of living fully present in my cottage, as-if-forever, while also continuing my search for a new home.
The glorious fall weather continues, filling me with so much joy as I delight in wandering the trails again! In the groves, oranges begin their annual Thanksgiving time turning from green to the early yellow that will, by Christmas, be moving toward a deepening orange. Nature’s holiday décor. The Meyer lemons are ripening now on the young tree just outside my kitchen window. From that same window I also watch the daily fall of ripe, wonderfully juicy, tiny Mexican limes. I use the ground-fall to make delicious glasses of fresh ginger-limeade every day, sweetening them with tiny amounts of stevia instead of honey or sugar.
I pull up the “gone-by” heirloom cherry tomato plants. Part of doing general veggie garden clean-up. I decide to leave my still producing heirloom beefsteak tomato plant in the ground. Curious to see if these baby beefsteaks will actually ripen. It’s time for a new planting of mustards, bok choi and arrugula. Am I staying here for a while? Leaving soon? What to do? I plant half the new crop in the ground. The second half I plant in some pots from which I’ve pulled “gone-by” annuals.
It’s strange, this being fully present to living in this familiar paradise while at the same time being fully engaged in looking for a place to move to by the April first deadline. I think (briefly) of giving myself permission to take a big break, to forgo the annual harvesting-and-composting of the gazillion ripe olives on the tree outside my front door. After all, I’m leaving here–maybe sooner rather than later. But the incredible oily purple mess they leave on the gravel path and on my shoes (!) makes such a break untenable. So, here I am picking olives. Then onto weeding the huge expanses of bark covered ground around my tent, my hammock and my gardens. And, every morning picking up the olives that fall from the branches that were beyond the reach of my eight-foot ladder. It feels right to continue the sacred tasks of tending all of this beauty. Even, and perhaps especially, if I’m about to leave it. To do anything less feels disloyal and care-less!
In the mountains, the paradox of winter in southern California: Carpets of sycamore, aspen and birch leaves mix with the spread of new green: the velvet of grasses and wild plants covering the ground in the shaded, moister places. Gnarled bare bones of deciduous trees festooned with yards and yards of fresh, fast-growing wild cucumber vine. Vibrant new stands of shiny poison oak and dusty gray-green mallow. Everything an endless, intimate braiding of dying away and being reborn.
So much this feels like what’s simultaneously going on in my own life. The ending–with B’s death this fall and the memorial service for her in mid November–of the last vestige of having critical, ambivalent-about-me people in my life. (She the last current representation of my birth mother’s energy lineage.) The coming completion (in January, after five and a half years) of writing the tales–Monthly Musings–for each of the 58 cards of the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. The likely end by April–or sooner–of my sojourn in this magnificent Eden in which I’ve lived the past 14 years of my journeying. And, in the middle of these dyings-away, a profound, burgeoning sense of opening to newness, a growing sense of expanding possibility, new directions, awakenings.
Though, for the past three weeks, there hasn’t been anything new in the rental ads, I seem for the most part untroubled by my “predicament” of needing to find a new home. I live life as if I’m to be here forever. Enjoying the fall harvest of citrus–grapefruit and pixie tangerines as well as the Meyer lemons and Mexican limes. Making wonderful fires in the chilly days and sometimes-frosty evenings. Continuing to putter with and care for everything inside and outside of my dear little cottage. Beginning all the year-end winnowing of my possessions, divesting myself of whatever, this year, seems no longer relevant to my life.
Through all of October and November and into this first week of December, I’ve taken every other week as a “silent” unplugged week. It’s felt sooo luxurious and voluptuous to have all this retreat, hermitting time. Especially after what seemed like the whole of summer awash in the chaos and the people contact involved in B’s illness and dying. I’m feeling myself again/anew on the far side of so much unto-myself-alone time.
In the middle of all this solitary, quiet time, I’ve also had my weeklong annual birthday-celebrating retreat. It was odd to watch how little interest I had this year in what used to be central rituals of this yearly retreat. After two or maybe it’s three years now, of having one week a month of almost total solitude, the time-out for my birthday seems less freighted with the “specialness “ it used to carry. I feel a little nostalgia for that sense of specialness. Yet, mostly, I feel the peacefulness of now having absolutely no structure or plans for the time. Always I am practicing and learning to come to these unplugged moments empty of any agendas or expectations. To practice being completely open to whatever unfolds in and around me in each moment.
It’s actually funny to watch myself. If I wake up any given morning with even a vague notion of walking in some particular canyon, I can be certain that I’ll be led in endless other directions that day. So, I learn to let go of any idea of what my day might be about, to just follow where Spirit/my deep self leads me. It’s all quite fascinating. Every day has a kind of mystery about it, even when all I’m doing is rather ordinary day-to-day maintenance.
In this vein, finding myself being led–surprisingly and earlier than usual–to prepare all the files, envelopes and templates for closing out the old year and setting up for the new one. “Receiving” this year’s New Year/Solstice card, the words and the drawing. Setting up web and hard copy order forms, web and hard-copy catalog pages to include this sweet new addition. “This Moment Woman” is her name. Her message:
Change moving quickly
Everything intense
Overflowing, too muchness.
Then, remembering:
Close eyes, breathe
Deeply, slowly
Again, and again
And again.
Feeling the slowing
In our body
Calling us lovingly
Into the very thinnest
Slice of now
Into just-this-moment
Here, where always
We have all we need
To balance
To cope
To hold ourselves
Safe.
Remembering:
Close eyes, breathe
Deeply, slowly
Again, and again
And again.
I listen deeply to Her voice and I find myself surrendering in complete trust that I’ll have just what I need when I need it. That my “next place” will reveal itself at just the right moment. At least, most days I feel this certainty, this radical trust in Spirit. Every once in a while, a harsh and cynical rumbling voice taunts me by suggesting that I’m “really nuts” for believing any of this. It amazes me to watch myself embrace this nasty voice. I lovingly tell her that I know that she’s feeling quite frightened and uneasy with the situation. I remind her that she has me with her no matter what. I remind her that, always in the past, we magically HAVE gotten what we needed, even if sometimes it appeared in the twelfth hour. And, even if, at just the moment that it appeared, it didn’t seem quite “right” to us. I remind her that we’re still doing all there is to do to find a new home. I remind her that she can let me know that she’s uneasy and in need of comfort without talking so meanly to get my attention. She calms down then and we move back into quietly trusting Spirit.
In this trusting place, all the me’s of me remember to honor that this is–once again in my life–a “not-knowing time.” A time when there isn’t anything I can do to move things more quickly. A time when I haven’t a clue–either literally or figuratively–about where I’m to go next. A time when it’s even more important than usual to be extraordinarily loving and gentle with my very tender, vulnerable self.
Originally published December 2004
