the big fat juicy loving universe loves us

I had a very quiet weekend, just two days of silence, breathwork*, meditation, writing, and art (plus the soft little muffin in the photo, oh my stars!).

I know that a rut is just a grave with the ends kicked out. I used to say it to my sweet little husband, a creature of many habits, as I was moving from thing to thing like a baby frog with newly sprouted legs. There is a balance, obviously. Mike and I balanced each other. My anchor left in 2012. Sigh.

But despite my hoppity tendencies, I’ve been in a rut of sorts, a very pleasant one, which makes it harder to crack out. The crack started with my friend Janean sharing last Sunday what she’s been doing with breathwork, so in the way of hoppity frogs everywhere, I instantly downloaded the app aaaaaaaand didn’t use it. Until Wednesday. Oh. My. I’ve done breathwork before, but not this way. I was inspired.

What other graves could I climb out of? Oh yeah, evenings spent streaming wildly entertaining, addictive, stories-of-others’-lives on all of the apps. (I am not judging here, I will continue to follow the series I love on the dreadmill and other places and probably will devote entire evenings to it at some point in the future. But when exiting a rut-turned-grave, it’s best to leap fully out.)

I planned my weekend retreat since I was booked to be Daisy’s nanny for 48 hours. I realized I’d become lazy about asking for signs and wonders. (There’s a lovely place of KNOWing once we’re awake, and it’s easy for me to become complacent there. Everything is a sign, everything is a wonder. How could that not be true? Who needs more?)

But why not more? I asked the Big Fat Juicy Loving Universe to surprise me. And the BFJLU did not disappoint. Beyond the fact that javelinas have been important to me since a magical night in Sedona, I discovered that the root word “jave” means master, and “lina” means light. So getting the message in the photo below ~ only minutes after I’d asked ~ was pure joy. A javelina sighting from halfway across the country; my friend an unwitting participant in the delivery of my sign. Masters of Light. We are all that, even the unlikely looking little javelinas.

Next up was noticing the trees beyond the deck, having an IM conversation about (invisible!) woodland creatures with a friend in Colorado, and then the ridiculously impossibly beautiful lavender mushroom shared by my friend Sandy, whose little mountain in North Carolina is actually called Elfinwood. Elves, fairies, gnomes, they seem so ridiculous and childish, but WHY NOT? If I were a woodland fairy, I would LIVE next to, under, on top of the irridescent, gleaming, heavenly-colored light being in Sandy’s photo. A wonder. Something I’ve never seen before, at least in this way, this glistening lavender mushroom.

And then there was tree communion. On the way to let Ivy out for a potty break, I was asking the BFJLU to surprise me. I’ve walked Ivy’s woods countless times in the last two years, since Ivy came to stay. It’s where my double-trunked tulip poplar lives, a sacred place.

I was looking forward to seeing my tree. I’d forgotten about asking for a surprise (hoppity brain). I’ve noticed the winding ridge that begins at the end of our path, but I’ve never taken it. “For no particular reason,” Ivy and I Forrest-Gumped our way up a little rise and onto that narrow, curving ridge (what is that thing? I am so curious), and after excusing ourselves to the spiders and stepping over a few tree trunks, there was the surprise.

I didn’t know there was another enormous tree in these woods I’ve walked over and over. Oh how I wish a camera could capture the immensity of this thing which has been right there, everpresent, during my many, many forays into this little forest. What a holy metaphor that is: divine gifts are everywhere and always present, we only need to uncover them.

Excavation, not acquisition: it’s ALL already here.

And now I have two sacred places in this little forest alongside the creek. Sixty-five pound Ivy’s in that photo for scale, and my hand, but you’d have to see this magnificent thing to get a sense of her. Tulip poplars, actually a kind of magnolia, can grow to 160 feet though most hit 80-100’ in these parts. They grow straight and tall and fast because they crave the light, and tolerate no shade. Yet another metaphor for the spiritual path, I think.

It was magic. A surprise. A divine being just standing there BEing, and me, oblivious, until I took the unexpected path.

I don’t know what all of this means, but it brought a lot of joy. I know there’s something to breaking out of ruts, to trying new things ~ and old things, in a new way like that breathwork!!! ~ and asking for new experiences. It’s all just out there waiting for us. Patiently. Without judgment. There is no “why doesn’t she just blah blah blah” from the BFJLU. Only “oh my, here she comes!” when we break free and try something new.

Here’s a prayer Mike and I used as a part of working the 12 steps. It’s called “the set aside prayer,” and there are 10,000+ versions of it so you can make your own. My prayer yesterday went something like this:

Dear Love: Please set aside everything I think I know about god, love, the universe, life, this beautiful world, living, and especially spiritual matters, so that I may have an open mind for a new experience with all of these things. Thank you. And so it is.

A BFJLU answered with magic. I’m out of a (delightful, enjoyable) rut right now. No doubt I’ll get into one again in the future, because that’s how humans are built. But I’ll continue this prayer that I said every day with Mike for 15 years (until I forget again, as I will) and allow for the joy in this moment, here and now.

I hope your day brings you a surprise.

Here are a few more photos and a couple of videos of the woods, for the beauty of it all. And the magic.