The Winds of Change Have Come

Our Mother hung our clothes out on the line

All year round

In the winter, clothes frozen on the line would be brought in and hung in the kitchen over our indoor line where the heat from our wood stove would finish the drying process

Our Mother loved the smell of the clothes fresh off the line

If you asked her why she would say, "Because they smell like the wind."

She loved the wind

Always when leaving the house as she stepped outside

Her first act would be to stop, sniff and taste the air

Sometimes she’d sniff, taste and move forward without a word

But other times she’d make us stop and pay attention

With a Mother’s authority she’d say, “Stop. Smell that. The winds of change have come.”

As a child, I simply accepted that sometimes the wind shared things with our Mother. As a teenager, I must admit to finding her way and manner of approaching life at times embarrassing and I longed to have my sweaters and jeans smell like Downy, the fabric softener all the other Mothers seemed to be using at the time.

But I marvel now

And I see the substantive gift she gave us

In her insistence in hanging the wash year round

In her rituals

Her stopping and tasting the air around her before moving forward, her digging in the earth every spring and summer and planting new life

Environmentally respectful, yes.

But it was more than that for her

In amongst the flow and flap of sheets and clothes on the line

In amongst the garden rows of freshly greening life

In the pause just beyond our door

Our Mother was showing us faithfulness

To her Creator

To her own nature

She was showing up…listening

Wanting to Commune with Spirit

And trusting that Spirit was wanting to commune with her

At the clothes line

At her doorway

In her Garden

In her Joy, in her Struggle and in her Pain

The Holy Spirit was alive to our Mother

In the elemental

In the Earth, the Air, the Fire, and the Water

That was our Mother’s truth about God.

The Unfolding of a Story

When we get to unfold the pages of our story with someone who remains by our side and does not run from the magnitude of it.

And when we get to see our story through the honest and compassionate eyes of another, an illumination takes place that validates us and lights up the corners and edges of our stories. The chapters in our life-stories no longer remain fixed. An intimacy is invoked and Ruah enters in bringing the breath of life animating the space and the meaning in and between the lines.

Old paragraphs, verses, and lines start to breathe again and there is an expansion and a softening in our hearts that allows for seeds of a new perspective to be planted.

 An internal gestation takes place and our stories become pregnant with new meaning and hope. They light the way to a deeper understanding of our meaning and purpose.

Porous Creatures

Earlier this year Jim surprised me with an ancestry.ca dna kit and signed me up for an ancestry.ca account. With a spirit of adventure and with much anticipation I sat at the computer and logged into my account for the first time.

Since the Howatt family tree had already been charted, I had decided to explore my mother's side of the family (MacDonald) first. It amazed me how quickly I was led to my maternal grandparent's information and to my mother's name simply by adding the area where my mother had been born. 

However, I discovered her name had been abbreviated to "Marg" and my immediate excitement shifted to annoyance. My mother called us by our full names, so it was important to me that her full name, Marguerite Alexandra, should be reclaimed.

New to the site I looked for ways to edit information, to restore the fullness of my mothers name, but being new to the site I couldn't find an edit option, so I made a conscious decision to put in my own information and come back to it the following day. So I entered my name and current address, and then clicked back to review the page containing my maternal grandparents, and my mother's and her siblings information before closing.

AND

I was surprised to see my mother's name was no longer Marg, but now was listed as Marguerite.

I don't know how the site's technology allows for such shifts of subtle (not so subtle to my heart) changes and I don't need to know. My focus is on another shift that started unfolding in that moment...a deeper awareness of our potency and how our actions, even small ones, can affect another.

As I unfolded my story, so to was my mother's story affected. Marguerite's Story.

The Mi'kmaq believe that as we heal our lives, we heal the lives of our ancestors seven generations back and we also help heal future generations to come.

And that belief now envelops me with a more personal and deeper meaning.

As porous creatures, each of us an assemblage of over one hundred trillion cells, it is our nature to be affected, to affect and to respond. And although not all of life's situations and occurrences are of our choosing, we do get to choose how we respond: if we are reactionary, or if we move prayerfully and thoughtfully...aware of ourselves, aware of others, and alive to the fullness our choices.

Creation Spirituality - Power Point Presentation

 http://slideonline.com/presentation/181689-power-point-creation-spirituality-pptx

You ask, "What is the Wind?" - A Bedtime Story

You ask,

“What is the Wind?”

Oh, that is the breath of sisters

Moving across space and time

Traveling through the trees

And moving among the hearts of all creatures.


That is Gaia setting loose her silver hair

Each strand, setting loose

A shining constellation of stars

Shining brightly to let her sister, Luna know

The day is done.


You ask,

“What is the Wind?”


That is Luna.

Hearing her sister, Gaia

She climbs Jacob's Ladder

With her skirt swirling

Steadily she moves closer

Rung by rung

Rising to embrace

To kiss the face

Of her dear sister.


On this evening

As on every evening

Since the beginning of time

These two sisters come together

To sip from the Milky Way

And whisper stories of their time spent apart.

Breathing

They sit in the quiet of daybreak
Inhaling the light and heat of the first slivers of sunlight

Filling lungs

Expanding belly

Holding the light, and the heat 

As it travels though veins coursing through the fullness of body ~ seeking and inflaming the Smoldering embers of soul

Next the exhalation

Releasing of all the toxins, tensions, anxiety, and the muddle from muscle, tendon, and bone ...

And FIRE builds in the belly

A delicious warmth that

Swirls and Swells and Spreads and Remembers

 A fire that co-creates and blesses
The fire and passion that reclaims space for all of creation within Creation's story