Day 13: Learning to Rest

It’s hard work learning to rest. To allow healing to happen. To trust that this present moment is filled with the living presence of a revelatory, creative God who shows up in many names and forms on the interstitial boundaries of all that is seen and unseen.

Most of my life has been dedicated to serving, giving, and growing in relationship as an active member of a multitude of forms of communal life – in human and more-than-human circles. As a 75-year-old being of nature, suddenly projected into a recent cataclysmic life and death moment, I’m constantly being brought back to the gift and abundance of Life. What gratitude! The joy of being alive wafts Her presence through my healing room here at Silver Sage Village in Boulder, CO. What a gift to have already been part of this co-housing experiment in aging-in-place. To now be able to depend on every handrail, walker, wheelchair, and commode that usually lies in a tangle of helplessness in a corner of our community storage room.

Uli and I have been longing for something more. Waiting with one foot out the door, working hard to move out of here for the past 5 years, desperate at times for the freedom to purchase another forever home in these foothills. HA! Somehow, we’re still here – living in a beautiful, rented basement - that’s another long story!

With two broken legs needing care, I can’t go back downstairs. Instead, I’m in residence in the guestroom/meditation room, relishing a very quiet, yet communal space for the next long weeks ahead. Uli is my trusty and exhausted caregiver. (He walked 12,000 steps the other days getting me from rehab into here!) These challenging days also present an involuntary, unexpected detour for him from hour to hour.

Our lives have always been dedicated to building spiritual community around the globe, I’m continuing to write these posts with the awareness that I’ve been given this season to tell not only our story but of so many with whom our lives intersect in Spirit energy.

My and OUR work is to REST into the mending of broken bones.

Both the broken bones of community inside our bodies and outside, with our earth connections to this living planet. It will take a long time, but our earthy bodies know how to heal when they are aligned and attuned inside our sheath of skin and empowered by the mysterious flow of Spirit. Our Earth is calling each of us to know our place, to breathe Life back into dry, disconnected bones.

Then we can all stand up in community, each of us supporting each other, in the way we know best. Offering our true soul gifts into the world for the healing of this planet. Being a unique outflowing of Love that has been channeled, prepared through each of us in a peculiarly exact way from our Ancestors. Then, we will all stand up. Take one step at a time and love our way back into harmony with this Earth. I’m listening to the much-loved Hallelujah song – find it on some device and sing it in your favorite version. We are called to be together in this healing journey!

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Notice a spider’s web vibrating as the wind blows, or when an insect flies into it. Whether you’re young or older, meditate with awareness on the choices you make from moment to moment and how you affect communal life on this planet.

What does your web look like today?

Have you become aware of how each change and decision you make, consciously or unconsciously, affects a web of relationships around you and in your body being?

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Next: Day 16