A new friend gave me a bottle of bubbles today. Well, she gave them to me last night but they were for my day of silence today. She wanted me to spend some time playing. And I was looking forward to playing almost as much as taking photographs in my silence.
I walked down to a park on the lake near Christ the King Retreat House where I am attending a Hearts on Fire retreat with speaker, Terry Hershey, author of Soul Gardening and various other books. There is just something about retreat leaders that get us to pondering and digging around in the dirt of our lives while seeking the light, yes? He asked us, "What is it in your dirt that you are afraid of?" And I suppose I never really moved much beyond that question, I got caught up in my digging. There is just something about the silence that invites digging and, woe is me, I am a reflective over-achiever.
I kept coming back to a quote of mine that emerged in some poetry I wrote last fall that I shared on my imamosaic blog called "i see you ~ come home." I wrote it after walking the Celtic Triple Spiral Labyrinth at Grunwald Guild and it has become one of my favorites, it is just so deliciously dark.
I carefully spread my scarf on the grass by a beautiful large tree on the top of a hill overlooking the park and the lake. I laid down in the grass and looked up at the sun and the sky peeking through the bountiful branches overhead. I listened to the wind breathing through the leaves before finally blowing bubbles and bubbles and bubbles. I let the quote rumble around in my soul and I invited myself into using an adaptation of it to spring into some new writing:
Terrified of being trapped
in a story not written for me
But ...
what if
my story
is a thousand tiny bubbles
floating in the air
each rainbow orb
not simply a note
in the symphony of my life
but the whole composition
echoing in the heart of God.
And me?
I am the air God breathes
Before I left home, I picked up a pottery prayer piece made by a potter friend of mine. It was calling me, beckoning me to take it with me on my retreat. There is a dragon fly on one side. If you turn it over, it says "freedom." I have found it a very surprising companion this week for I didn't know I was being held captive by this fear, believing it to be left behind in other fields of dirt. Exploring it these past few days and deepening the exploration in the silence has been liberating for me, one more step in my journey toward wholeness.
Thank you Terry Hershey for leading us on this grand gardening adventure! Peace be with you!
