Simple Magic

Photo: Stones in our field brought from the Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho.

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Sometimes you don’t see the magic of life events and decisions until months or years after the fact. This weekend marks the six month anniversary of living on our farm called Elysia. I’ve grown a lifetime in these two seasons. I’ve written a lot to you about longing and beauty. I’ve written about my island home. The islands are blatantly magical. Who would not be bulldozed by the awe of a hundred mountains floating in a crystal sea? Now I write to you about carrying the magic in simpler country.

I feel the steady growth of subtle magic in my life on this land. This place is more than a place. It’s a school of the human soul. It’s a grist mill of the heart. It’s sometimes a burning field, now frosted in white (like me). If I can adapt and thrive in this country and familial context, then I know I can do more than I ever dreamt. There have been many new challenges: a neighborhood that is often filled with ignorance and poverty, the roar of family life, being baffled between city and sea, being alone most of the time yet on the hem of a braided community. If I can expand and explore being a provider of safety and solidity, if I can evolve and not leave behind the creative good aspects of the puere’ (being a child in an adult body), if I can release the codependent ways of control, then I can be more than my original programming. I am becoming a man here on this land. I am waking up from the “other world” and seeing the joy in the grit of this world.

Last night I revisited the little home I moved from in Uptown, Vancouver. I drove by slowly, craning my neck. The old street was draped as usual in autumn leaves. I wheeled by in the stealth of night’s covering. I saw a ragged yard, a dead tree that I’d loved from a sapling. There was the picket gate off its upper hinge, cockeyed. The shades glowed with incandescence. But there were no shadows dancing there. No flicker of candles burning. My old house appeared sad and small. I wonder if it appeared like this when I lived there? That little place was a weigh station for my move further north. I never made it to my islands. But life apparently is not over yet.

Sometimes miracles occur within very common handiwork. For years I dreamt of Avalon where the Spirits and I danced with God, a primeval forest with stones singing in the rub of the tide. I’ve spent most of my life dreaming.

(Photo: Cabin Window Rain)

I came Here by surprise. Through the heavy dreams of March rain I drove into the weedy driveway. I Stepped out of my car and heard the creek whispering just like it is today. Six white buildings stared at me blankly from a three acre canvas of grass. I said to myself without thinking: “This place could work for all of us.” Like we were already a family. That moment was the entry point to a thousand small decisions that helped me grow past my self perceived limitations.

My life script no longer cries “Someday I’ll be home.” I hear the river in me whispering that I am the home I’ve always sought.

I’d lived my entire adult life, until this past year, bent on living safely like a monk. In many ways my profound spiritual experiences tainted me. They showed me a world “just over there” that shined with only love, grace and belonging. It was not like the rain of this world. In my twelve years of shamanic training we practiced dying (sometimes literally) in order to reach the compassionate ones. Now, I practice living.

I say to the loving spirits: “I am wrapped in God now. Yes, I know you are waiting. I know our island home hovers expectantly. Wait for me. Be patient. Let me gather more stories, more happy tunes with sad words, more colors from the twilight forest. Wait. I’ll come to you when I have learned to be human.”

I think I’ll practice much more the miracle of ordinary living. I think I’ll practice the gifts of deep breathing, laughing and crying before I go to the other world. There is so much to be grateful for today.

Rick