Thursday, June 7, 2012

RECIPROCITY

Rain has blessed the valley for almost a week now. Chilly nights necessitate tarps over our little flower and tomato beds. I've been ecstatic to have days for puttering around on the property, installing some new herbs, including Golden Seal, and Monarda, and checking on old ones like the Nettle, Comfrey, and Elderberry. My life is as rich as our compost. It seems I get carried away in various directions for days on end; for example, yesterday my herbalist mentor took me to her picking place for Arnica Montana, where the blossoming plants perfectly matched the Oregon Grape blossoms! Together we gathered the wild yellow heads, and later I ceremoniously dropped them into liquid coconut oil, to simmer out the water for the night. Then I went on line, and hauled out some of my books to re-research Arnica and marvel at the precious medicines that are available to us from the Earth Mother. When I returned from a class last night the whole house smelled like cookies, the result of the warm sugars in the blossoms and in the coconut oil!

Yesterday I tended plants, some days trail off into praying and reading, or writing poetry. Others evolve into sitting with friends telling stories and joking about ourselves. Sometimes I am a housewife for several days: cleaning cupboards, touching up paint, moving furniture and throwing out old stuff. Then there's cooking days, when we are oversupplied with vegetables or a turkey carcuss, and my creativity flows into tucking them away for future use. The privilege to choose the activity of the day, to follow those subtle leanings of my being toward one or another joy, brings deep humility, after many years of doing what MUST be done (raising kids, earning wages, etc.). Is it privilege, luck, destiny or just life that gives me these freedoms?

I imagine this creative period of my life similar to a spring-budding tree whose juices stir with the warming of the earth, and rise to catalyze all the processes for bud, leaf, flower, and fruit. All nature's forces come to assist this blooming; in my case, nature's forces include my good fortune to be healthy, to have a encouraging partner, to live in a peaceful valley where food is abundant. And like the tree, whose leaves offer shade, whose flowers offer scent, whose fruit offers nourishment, my offerings flow to my partner, family and community in a continual stream of blessing. There is profound reciprocity in this dance, to the degree that the difference between "me" and "them" dissolves as skin absorbs light and radiates health simultaneously.

The rain moved east late yesterday and the sun, perhaps a little lonely from Venus' transit, shines equanimously on all beings in our neighborhood. It calls the tomatoes to lift their leaves, it calls the sunflower seeds to push harder through the soil, and it calls me to the next tasks awaiting me outside. I will work harder than my muscles would like, and after I decant the arnica blossoms, I will have a warm balm to rub into my shoulders and legs with some to share with friends and family. This sacred cycle of working in grace, receiving in grace, and offering in grace feels fragile, so subtle, like the tiny ladyslippers we found yesterday, purple blossoms soon to die. If I'm lucky I can live in this dimension of reciprocity in my work out in the world, remembering the divine unity that allows trees, plants, and human beings to unfold, taking just what is needed, and offering their best.

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