22 November 2019

It’s very quiet in the house. It’s Saturday morning and while everyone else is asleep I’ve walked the labyrinth in my pyjamas, feed the dog (oh, news! Sue the dog has joined our family!), collected the eggs, had a quiet coffee, listened to National Radio and read some of the Saturday paper. Soon everyone will be up, and it will be quite a different day.

I wonder how your day is going? Saturday for some of you, Friday for others. I’m wishing you a wonderful end to the week, and start to your weekend.

Something I noticed this week was a feeling of being distanced—from my family and from the garden and land. I’ve been really busy with stuff for a few weeks, often on the computer, and it’s so easy to get pulled along by the to-do list. I even get this bodily sense of my feet not being on the ground, and being hurtled through space (which sounds like it could be a fun experience, but isn’t really).

It’s the perfect backdrop from which to write The Weekly Letter. How do we reconnect to where we live when we’ve been away (either physically, or mentally and emotionally)?

That feeling of disconnection or dislocation can leave me feeling antsy or on edge. In the past I would pace, or my mind would wander, looking for something to latch on to, and to make me feel better. It’s taken me a while to understand that what I need to do is stop. Just sit still for a bit. Take a cup of tea or coffee, sit outside or on the back door step and feel myself there. It’s like if I let my body stay still for a moment I can let my mind or energy catch up with it. They can fit themselves back together.

I shared a poem this week which I started writing in the throes of busy-ness. The first lines came to me and I jotted them down, pushed them aside and resumed my frantic working on my laptop. Silly me. Some part of me knew what I was doing, and knew the way out. I finished it a few days ago and sure enough, there was my answer…

Intuit

There are places where thoughts cannot go,
places your mind will not take you.
Like a road that stops at the foot of a hill
or falls short in the deep of a valley.

Be free of mind and digressions.
Shuck off worries and plans, set aside
intent, throw down the map you think
got you this far.

Where the road runs out, explore. 
Go by feel, by taste, by the way your skin
quivers, follow the body’s antennae. 
This way, your bones sing. 
This way, home.

(you can also read Intuit online here)

Here’s something beautiful I read this week. A friend shared it with me, her 78 year old mother having shared it with her. It’s a poem by Ellen Bass and, in this week of having published my poetry collection Lullaby for Mothers, I loved reading this beautiful poem from a mother to her daughter.

For My Daughter on Her Twenty-First Birthday

When they laid you in the crook
of my arms like a bouquet and I looked
into your eyes, dark bits of evening sky,
I thought, of course this is you,
like a person who has never seen the sea
can recognize it instantly.

They pulled you from me like a cork
and all the love flowed out. I adored you
with the squandering passion of spring
that shoots green from every pore.

You dug me out like a well. You lit
the deadwood of my heart. You pinned me
to the earth with the points of stars.

I was sure that kind of love would be
enough. I thought I was your mother.
How could I have known that over and over
you would crack the sky like lightning,
illuminating all my fears, my weaknesses, my sins.

Massive the burden this flesh
must learn to bear, like mules of love.

(You can find the website of Ellen Bass here.)

Fall in love with where you live (and feel it love you back)

Where are you in your relationship with the place you live? You might know it intimately, or have just moved someplace new, or maybe you are returning home after some time away. Whether we know our place well or not, it is there for us just the same.

My invitation this week is that when you feel yourself longing for something, anything, don’t leave. Don’t go out, away, don’t make plans—just stay. If the weather permits (or even if it doesn’t) go outside.

Whether we are in the countryside or the city, the ground underneath us is billions of years old. It holds memories of everything we remember here, and things we couldn’t imagine. The land we live on is like a grandmother who will happily let us rest with her as long as we need.

There are many ways to know the land we live on, but none so powerful as sitting with it. Each week from hereon out, I’m going to offer all the different big and small ways I’ve found to connect with the land, but always staying with it, sitting on it, is something we can do that can ground us (even if we are unaware in the moment that it is doing so).

And, on cue and right on time as I finish, I can hear little footsteps moving around upstairs….

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Mary xx

p.s. here are some other new things from this week…

My offer to hand-parcel and post a copy of Lullaby for Mothers…

…and another new poem