{ Winds of Change }

{ Winds of Change }

On one of those nights when your body aches inside with a longing you can not describe, you know you will not sleep, you dream instead. Last night was such a night for me. For all my pretty words I find this place ask only for what is true. Not asking for what I conjure up, with flowery wishes from my kettle of emotions. Emotions hung over dying embers deep in woods where I walk alone in my darkness, thinking, not looking for the light. Pulling my dream cloak about me as though I were cold, I embraced this awaited journey. We are our own teacher, and student inside us. We are our own masters, and slaves. We are what we believe.

Sliding into fuzzy awareness that slowly clears like the morning fog, finding I stand before an open grave. An old woman painted fine with man made makeup does not hide her age. She looks up at me. I hear wailing, and crying behind me. Whimpers of those who still have tears, and yet do not understand who, and what they cry for now. Everything is changed. A bible lays folded in this old woman’s frozen hands. The contradiction of knowing she long ago gave up praying. She had left man made churches unashamed for her supposed sins. She looked deep within to find her way back home.

Lost in thoughts I could smell the flowers mixed with pine sap, and maple syrup running from well groomed trees. The sun held no warmth but shined. A chipmunk clung to the side of a near by branch chattering at this disturbance. Then I heard her voice below me speak from the depth of the dead. “I wished I had left a long time ago.” When I looked into her eyes now dry with no more tears she knew I heard her. She rose up from this shell returning to the earth from which it had come, to stand beside me.

Her life like many others, filled with choices made. Experiences, and lessons painted like makeup on manikins. Never to forget she understood both sides of pains, and joys. She watched, her heavens, and hells, and her own inner power to be her devil, demons, or god where angles sung of peace. Inside growing old beyond her time. More unsure as the days went on just where she fit in. She drew comfort now from this place where solitude would carry her on.

A misty rain began to fall. Quiet all around, and then this hand tapped my shoulder. DeeDee as we called him, short for Doug the Digger, because he had spent a life time digging graves, was letting me know time was no more. He said, “gotta close the gap lady. You might want to get in out of the rain.”

How do you close the gap from here to the other side was not so much a question as just a thought. I turned to go, and the old woman stood like a statue before her open grave.

I tried to speak but nothing came out. She understood. She said, “I wished I had left long ago when I still believed in love.” When truth was not a lie, and where the heart was not shattered from holding on to one embrace.”

Thinking nothing seems sure these days. Moments ask for commitments. Life ask for living. Experiences, and lessons searching out the cobwebs in places we do not understand inside ourselves.

Letting go, embracing what is, afraid at times. Did we face our fears? Did we ever listen to the winds of change? Did we ever ask just what love is? Are we so sure of where we are that what we have is never going to be left behind? Then again was our own need so great that we did not care who we hurt to get the fleshes desires satisfied? Was the little self greater than the higher self? Did Spirit speak, or was ego all we heard? Was the chance before us one made in trust, and was innocents the power to believe? Did we wish for others what we drew to ourselves? Or did we walk on another’s grave to find we were alone inside this gap, somehow caught between the worlds we knew. Was this just a dream?

I woke to a cat fight going on outside, then discovered a mother fox was inside my home. She was hungry, looking for food. I called her Foxy Lady. She left, but I knew she would return. The cats now feeling unsafe inside the only security they had. Do we invite our own truth inside with respect? Is there honor among thieves? Do we know who we are, and are we willing to stop the worlds around us to seek out the quiet stillness of the dark, so we might understand the power of the holes we have locked ourselves into? Are we willing to grow? Do we understand the brewing of a hand made stew? What does life, and living mean to you? Are there more excuses yet to be explored? And are you willing to still believe in things you can no longer see?

Reaching the black iron gate with pillars holding stone lions on each side, I left the cemetery having paid my respect. I hear the words inside the wind, “Let the dead bury the dead, and care for your own soul where spirit lives inside.”

Cackling laughter behind me makes the hair on my neck stand up. The old woman’s spirit followed me to this gate. Turning I face her with the compassion of my own years, and lessons. Love never gave up on her, or me. It was we who chose what we would embrace inside our conjured up places. She smiled at me, and said, “Made you think though didn’t I?”

Impact words, and love, hopes beside fears, and the human nature are what they are. The gap not separating, just reminding us who we are and what we choose to be. Are we still searching for answers while there is time, and no time at all. Maybe that is s why we came this far into the dreams made inside the nights before us.

As I thanked her, and turned to leave she say’s, “ one last thought, “A little garlic goes a long way in a good stew. Take the bitter with the sweet, seeking ever the balances needed for crossing thresholds not always made by human natures, inside the deepest of all experiences, and dreams. Sometimes its just Spirit coming through.” With these words she was gone. Distracted, I caught my foot on the side walk, and landed flat on my face. Yup, some things are up close, and personal, while others are a mile, or two away.

....amazing......