Hello all!
We are back in St. Louis, and I wanted to check in on the happenin’s round here. I drove home last week, and am adjusting to the weather here, storms and humidity a visceral reminder I am in the Midwest again.
I ran a few errands yesterday, windows down even with the heat, foot light on the gas, sun beating down through the sun roof, half listening to the sorrowful news coming through the speakers. It wafted through in stark contrast to the landscape here, seemingly impossibly lush and verdant after spending two months in the desert, fertile green holding the promise of new life and abundant harvest.
We spent some time in Chaco Canyon while we were in New Mexico, the picture you see is a view through the doorways of time, in the old Pueblo Bonito kiva. Those doorways are about 1200 years old, still quite intact, and they have remained stable, through life and death and the rebirth that always comes, no matter the details said lives and deaths may hold. Through rain and drought, clouds and sun, Chaco is always there, now bearing abundant harvest in the form of a spiritual energy that remains indescribable, ineffable perhaps, unless you have been there to experience it first hand. The place holds a haunting, almost eerie stillness, a sacred place in the middle of nowhere (now here?) that has withstood the test of time. If you ever have a chance to go, may I suggest it’s worth your time to do so.
We did some writing while we were there, some hiking, some exploring, and some deep listening at many levels. I have returned with my creative well more full than when I left, another form of abundant harvest. We are doing the Mother Wound retreat out there in the fall, and had the time and space to deepen into all that conversation can offer as well. As usual, Becky and I are collaborating on the retreats, which I really enjoy and look forward to doing again. For those of you who haven’t met Becky, she’s super smart, crazy organized, really creative and is able to roll through the changes with me, which I like most of all.
We were talking about how that deep, visceral parent wound often leads to being very intuitive, an empath with deep gifts, but you have to know how to nurture and harvest it in order to make it feel abundant. Left untended, it usually just presents as an underlying, constant need to “fix it,” or “help it,” which usually leads to exhaustion and a constant sense of failure, or not being enough. Really, I guess the best way to heal such things is to just let go of thought forms about not being or having “enough,” whatever that means for you, and to open to your life with a sense of compassion and curiosity. I know that’s easier said than done though, especially if you were taught it’s your job to be responsible for everyone and everything.
A gentle reminder if you are in that place today: You are not responsible for your parents, or any other adults other than yourself. It’s OK to let people learn to work out their own relationships, their own karma, their own path. There’s nothing “spiritual” about putting up with abusive behavior or nonsense, and you can be a good person and still say no. Really, your job is to come into alignment with your own Divine Presence, to know the bounds of what you can and cannot do, instead of being overly responsible and then feeling helpless or hopeless when you can’t fix it and then are blamed by others.
Anyway, I’m not big on the hard sell, but I don’t mind telling the truth, and the truth is we are doing some cool stuff with unwinding those old tender places in people, teaching them to harvest the gifts from the past. We are also doing a lot of writing, the publications on grief and hospice in full swing, which I also enjoy very much. Abundant harvest indeed.
In my garden, the tomatoes the furrylittleratbastard squirrels didn’t get are just about to ripen, I have a ton of blossoms on my cucumber vines, along with green beans and what looks like some watermelon thinking about manifesting out there. I planted a bunch of seeds before I left, watered the hell out of them and then drove away. Probably not the best way to go about it, but I believe strongly Nature always knows what to do, and usually does it better without too much interference from me, so that method always seems to be a good approach where I am concerned.
I love gardening– it’s way cheaper than therapy, plus you get tomatoes, and digging in the dirt then canning the results sort of feeds my Zen. All good stuff, and I am reminded of the many ways in which abundant harvest touches my life on a day-to-day basis, including in the form of all of you, so thanks for that.
As always, I returned to far too many emails to answer or even wade through, so if you tried to reach me and didn’t get me, please try again. And, as always, if you need anything or have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. Hope this finds all of you well and enjoying your own harvest these days. In this time of sorrow and divisiveness in the collective, may each of you remember your own goodness and trust your own love, enough to share it with your neighbor, seen and unseen. Peace to us all, abundant harvest indeed.
Thanks,
T