Next Day

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,

Good morning.  Woke up wanting to write some more to you.  The labyrinth has been overtaken by weeds this summer.  My neighbor has totally neglected the path.  I've been trying to stay detached and not get involved with her about it as our relationship is tenuous at best.  I've not been walking it at all because of all the weeds and such.  It's been so hard to watch the path be consumed.

Then last week something different happened.  One of the lawn care workers began to weed eat in the labyrinth.  I was so relieved! Then he stopped and moved on to another area of the yard before finishing!  I hollered at him to ask him to finish, but he could not hear me over the mowers around him.  I figured maybe it was just as well not to get involved, so I let it go.  For now.

Then the next day the person who mows my lawn came and I asked him to go ahead and finish weed eating the labyrinth.  He used to take care of that yard when my former neighbor lived there, so he said he'd be glad to for no charge!  He was equally disturbed by how she had abandoned the care of the labyrinth.  I came inside and wrote a letter to my neighbor reporting what had happened and that I went ahead and finished the weeding in the labyrinth because I care about that sacred path and that I would be honored to continue to take care of it while she got caught up on the others things she's trying to get done.

Yesterday walking this labyrinth was the only thing I felt like I could do from that place of the sinkhole.   The hardest part was walking through a large area where there used to be a Lamb's Ear plant.  M. mistakedly mowed it down.  All that is there is black earth and white flecks of the plant.  It looks like ashes.  I shuddered then and now as I recall.  Lamb's ear: Phoenix's ear.  I am shaking inside.  Still so much grief and devastation materialized.

And, it's raining this morning.  I am seeing the rain sink down into the roots of the Lamb's ear and soothing the trauma, the sudden decapitation of leaves and life.  The roots being calmed, their shaking quieting.  The sound of the gentle rain, a sweet humming into the earth, into the Lamb's ear roots.  I ask for regeneration also from this rain in time, from the soothing deep in the roots.  In time.  I know such things take time.  For now, I pray for just soothing.

I am grateful for the Path again being cleared.  Truly.  It's 'just' a configuration, but it's one that leads in and out again.   I need to know that Way even if I'm just wandering feeling oh so terribly lost.  Thank you, Goddess for this Path.  For the clearing.  For the soothing.

I love you, Phoenix, this day of the Crossroads when I decided to live the life that would never have existed if I decided otherwise.  I am quaking with that Yes.  So unsure.  So so unsure of my way.  The other night I dreamed that I went to visit a young person in an institution.  When I came in the room, this young person was sitting in their bed, facing the headboard, howling.  I sat next to them and howled too.  What else can one do?  That is my siren.

Love,
Me