Warm air, heavy with the scent of jasmine, wrapped around me as I entered the courtyard. It had only been four days but during that short time so much had changed.
The wall of jasmine was the most obvious change as its delicious smell mixed with gardenia created a mood-altering experience through scent. And as much as I wanted to explore, communion with the river came first.
Layers of humid air hung heavy over the water as my board sliced through the mirror-slick surface. My body longed for movement after traveling and sitting so much over the long weekend. I amped up the pace and had a great workout, during which I discovered the osprey babies I have been monitoring had hatched. Mama Osprey was feeding them as I paddled under their nest atop the high pole. This morning my river prayers were of thanksgiving for these new lives.
Upon returning home, I walked out to my garden and saw baby jalapeño peppers, baby tomatoes, and baby satsumas hanging green and full of potential. Growth was the theme of return to my beloved home.
After communing with my plant friends I turned on my favorite classical music in the speakers outside and glided around the courtyard greeting the beauty exploding everywhere. Such life!
The grandmother oak tree in the center stood watching and when I finished, she called to me. I laid my hands on her rough bark and felt her strength as I offered up a prayer of gratitude for the opportunity to celebrate the day with a morning courtyard dance.
A little over a year has passed since I moved home to the Gulf Coast. There have been no doubts regarding the move. Not one. Within a few minutes drive I can be on the beach, communing with big water….big salt water. My heart expands to meet the horizon. How I love this place!
Join me as I walk along the beach at Gulf State Park. Celebrate the beauty of our planet, the life force that infuses everything. We are observers, witnesses to this grandeur.
Aren’t we lucky? Don’t you feel blessed to commune with nature!
“Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide? And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech? Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted. Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.” Kahlil Gabran
From a place of deep relaxation a vision emerged. I was in a vast Ocean, deep indigo in color and filled with beautiful creatures. A huge humpback whale echo-located me and swam very close. Harpoons with explosives sought him and massive nets and I urged him to swim away and escape. The ship came closer and closer and as his mate I urged him to dive deep. He constantly put himself in harm’s way to help others. In a frenzy, I swam trying to push his massive body down, deep into the blue depths. He sang to me and in pictures I saw his body taken into the ship that hunted him and watched as it took him apart, piece by piece. The thought came….people will pick his bones clean until there is nothing left.
And with one last surge of energy, I rammed him as the ship hit me. He was free but I was broken.
My whale body sank into the Void yet my consciousness remained. In that moment I knew that the essence of who I am lived on. It was love that drew me to him and love that kept me there. It was love that blocked the ship and kept it from breaking him.
I heard whale song and ocean sounds and felt total peace. Complete peace. As I opened myself to love, all fear disappeared.
And I knew that love is everything, in everything and available in endless supply. And because of this, I have everything I need. This is an abundant world of love.
My gigantic whale heart could hold love in unimaginable quantities and be a channel for it….for life force that is, in essence, love. What keeps us from swimming in this endless supply of love with conscious awareness? Are we so afraid of losing our ‘self’ or ego that we hold back and refuse to let the fires of love consume us, transform us?
I drifted back from this place of surrender, this place of unlimited abundant love, into my human form. With much to ponder I spent time in silence, listening and writing.
Love is like an ocean of vast immensity and we are like fish swimming in this limitless ocean begging for water. We forget we already have love and therefore, everything we will ever need.
As I breathe in, I breathe in love. It is the fabric of this physical world. The life force that holds it all together.
Nobody can withhold love from me because to receive love is as simple as inhaling. Nobody is gatekeeper for love coming to me except me.
Our minds create separation from Source…God…Great Spirit. Our thoughts create this feeling of aloneness. How could we ever be alone or separate from the Universe, from God, when we are surrounded by It? Are a part of It?
“Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.” I Corinthians 7.
My daughter Emily in the Caribbean waters of Bonaire
“Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls….when love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep…For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you….Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast. All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart……Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love….But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully.” Kahlil Gibran
This passage from The Prophet narrates the journey the soul takes in an effort to find love…looking for it in others, in things, in titles, letting ego define it. Ultimately, finding love requires sacrifice of the ego, a laying down of limits and limitations. And the realization that it is what created us, sustains us and breathes through us.
Photo by Ed Jackson of me and my buddy in a cave, Akumal, Mexico
Love is as close as the air we breathe, as we open to receive. We live in an ocean of love.
Today I wish to let my photography speak of my love for this beautiful planet…Earth. Happy Earth Day to all my relations….two-legged, four-legged, winged, finned, creepy crawlers….my heart is filled with love and appreciation!
At 6.15am my eyes popped open and I evaluated the wind situation quickly by glancing out the French doors. Perfectly calm…for now. I knew that sunrise would bring more wind. It is normal for winds to increase as the earth heats during the day but today–when the forecast called for 15 to 25 mph winds with 30 mph gusts–I knew my window for SUP boarding on the river (comfortably) was small. So I raced to get ready and was on the water by 6.45am.
Upriver, where I live, the river is narrow and calm
Paddling so early almost insures a visit with the river before human activity begins, while it is quiet and peaceful. The two wood duck couples I greeted were not happy about the intrusion on their morning ritual. But it was glorious and I sang apologies for my disturbing their morning.
It was mostly calm in the narrow part of the river with ripples from gusts barely registering on the water’s surface. Green was exploding around me, reflecting in the water and filling my vision with beauty. As I warmed up I felt my relief to be back on the water. Joy at feeling my muscles find their strength. Delight as I got to my cardio pace. YES!
Mullet were splashing so close to me that I wondered if there was such a thing as mullet armor or if I could invent it. Humorous perhaps but some of those fish get ambitious in their leaps. No joke!
Great blue herons fished peacefully along the banks. Green herons squawked, annoyed at my intrusion. The large pond slider on the log under the bridge was ousted by the tiny baby turtle. Both accepted me as a friend and showed no protest at my passing.
When I got to Bemis Bay, where the river opens up into a larger body of water, the wind was churning and gave me a good push. How nice to have this help. But I knew that upon return the wind would be gathering strength and I’d be facing it. But it was so worth the effort to be there, to be present on the Magnolia River.
On I paddled, now pushed by the gaining wind and happy to be sliding through a spring-time sunrise on my board, my ‘friend.’
When I got to my two mile marker–a tree that leans over the river, across from where the osprey perches in the cypress tree–I turned around and retrieved my water bottle to replenish my fluids. As I floated, beauty of the wild part of the river tapped at my heart and I returned the greeting by whispering words of gratitude.
The paddle back up river presented a kaleidoscope of patterns. Colors of gray, blue, white and green danced on the contours of small waves and I was lost in that world of shape and hue and wished I could paint what I saw. Then the sun broke through but it was a white sun, more like a moon glade and I paddled into the shimmering silver sunrise and gusting, whipping wind. I was sweating from the pace set but grateful to feel so present, so here in this body, and so surrounded by nature at its finest along the Alabama Gulf Coast.
Later in the day the blow lived up to the forecast. So glad was I that I had almost outsmarted the wind. Never would there be reason to claim a true one-upping something so big as the wind as there is always tomorrow….
It is so calm upriver….such a lovely way to end my workout and morning visit with the river and its residents
Warm air, heavy with the scent of jasmine, wrapped around me as I entered the courtyard. It had only been four days but during that short time so much had changed.
Layers of humid air hung heavy over the water as my board sliced through the mirror-slick surface. My body longed for movement after traveling and sitting so much over the long weekend. I amped up the pace and had a great workout, during which I discovered the osprey babies I have been monitoring had hatched. Mama Osprey was feeding them as I paddled under their nest atop the high pole. This morning my river prayers were of thanksgiving for these new lives.
The grandmother oak tree in the center stood watching and when I finished, she called to me. I laid my hands on her rough bark and felt her strength as I offered up a prayer of gratitude for the opportunity to celebrate the day with a morning courtyard dance.
