This is a story of divine wo-manifestation, which will not likely be told to completion today, or perhaps for a long, long, time.
It’s kind of the story of the rest of my life.
For an unbelievable and intolerable amount of time, I’ve made myself and everyone around me crazy while I looked for home. High and low, east and west, in the country and in the city, near my dearest friends, and in the middle of nowhere… I’ve been on the prowl for over a decade at least — I might’ve lost count the year I stopped working for other people.
When you’re searching everywhere for home, no place will really satisfy you. You want home to have all the things that you need and nothing you don’t, including your own despicable and persistent habits.
The moment I’d think I’d landed on it, my mind began a mean game of fault-finding, and then pluck every good feather until there’d be nothing left to love. And then I’d temporarily hate myself for being harder to please than a widow.
When I came to Portland a year ago, it was with a giant piece of paper folded up and overstuffed into my journal, covered in magic marker with a mind map to SouLodge Ranch (working title) with no directions or compass whatsoever — just a big tipi in the middle of the page with bubbles around it indicating what I’d do when I found my way home scrawled inside of them.
My word for the year for 2013 was HOME and I was determined to find it in the Pacific Northwest, so I packed up and headed North. North is always true, right? That year turned over and gave way to MOTHER, my way of committing to radical self-nurturance in this beautiful place.
Part of the concept of self-nurture meant to embody my own motto: Know what you need and ask for what you want, the catch mantra of everything we do in SouLodge from day one three years ago. Why had it taken me this long to be specific? What was I waiting for?
The other part of it was to actively practice naming what I wanted and then surrendering it to the divine creatrix herself, my Mother and yours, Mama Earth. The key has been knowing enough information to feel solid when I call for it. I’m getting better at it.
It seems paradoxical to declare a thing so boldly, having worked up my nerve and all, just to let the chips fall where they may. However, this is the ONLY thing that has ever worked for me when I’m wanting to call something in. I have to step up to the altar, say *it* out loud, and then honor my duty of getting back to work while the cosmos sorts out the details.
I have to trust that my way is being prepared for me.
No easy feat… but worthwhile to note that I’ll have cabin and gate keys to 68 acres of ranch land in Central Oregon at the end of next week. This land has my heart, my soul — and I am her official caretaker.
I am to Mother her.
She is my Home.
Leave a Reply