Piety what a year for piety. The irony that the year I fought my faith and ‘heart. There is a song “Nowhere and Everywhere” from Michelle Lewis (Practical Magic Soundtrack sustained me). It has a line “my heart fell out of my backpack and into a puddle” The songs of those late teen, early 20 years certainly capture a moment embed themselves like seeds. This line has risen to the top infrequently but often enough to notice in my life. I really think that whole song speaks much of 2023. It was a testing year asking me to prove the walking of my talk, and I stood frozen in overwhelmed often. My feet stuck in the mud as I picked up the pieces of my heart from the puddle, and realizing my backpack was still overflowing with much I needed to let go of. There was so much grief, life and death visited or at least knocked often, patterns of coping from childhood that served a 6 or 12 year old but not a grown adult with children of their own took over on autopilot in the chaos. I was depleted and in need of rest at the start of 2023. I stopped everything, including the life sustaining aspects of my Spiritual Practice. I had been in survival for so long, I struggled with the attempted transition, survival mode remained fixed. I had reached out for support from my spiritual mentors, and in receiving their very wise advice, feel I failed to find the strength to implement it. The fear of getting things wrong webbed its way into the stagnant absence of action on my part. A Parasitic mycelium seeking to rot the decay I haven’t thrown out of my backpack, but seeping into that which still had life left to live and give. The Moldy sandwich or rotten apple that stinks up the whole backpack. A deep cleaning was required. Yet I only noticed when there wasn’t time to do so effectively, or so I told myself. The dangers of only crisis management and no thought to long term maintenance to avoid those crisis moments held sway.
I gave my power away, watched as others ignored my warnings. I succumb to the Cassandra effect, unable to find the Will to fight for those helping me to act to prevent the foreseeable disasters, yet also lacking the Will to act myself instead. The biggest example is the steps my father built for us to get into the Yurt had a platform gap that fed water right into the Yurt. I knew the minute I saw it that was what would happen, and instead of fixing it myself I had multiple discussions with both my Dad and Spouse about the water coming in while being told it was just boot water. As we prepared the Yurt for Winter and then Moving the rot was found in the floor which is peeling the boot mat’s keeping the moisture in place. A whole section of platform needing repair, the original cause of the issue haphazardly dealt with this week after I insisted that if we couldn’t get the Yurt down and stored for the winter that it couldn’t keep pooling water in it. This minuscule moment a bigger pattern running through my life, where my inaction and voice feels unheard and others inaction and dismissal of that voice cuts like a knife in my heart. Knowing better and being unable to prevent the predicted disasters, definitely a strong thread in my life and my year.
There was much dancing at the gateway between life and death in 2023. Our Pigs joined us, and now they rest in the freezer nourishing our family, we were there for their end and butchering. Burns, Covid both came in February. The eggs we incubated in March became a flock of chickens supplying their own eggs now, yet their arrival also opening the gate enough there was a knock and my mother’s heart attack shook us all. In the Summer we lost our Dog Frekki as her mind addled with age wasn’t safe to manage, days after we nearly lost our youngest to Strep A, if not for Hospital access, we stayed 5 days. When we returned home from the extended hospital stay to our Cat Earle Grey having left not to return. Though the wayward lost Cat Luna returned scarred but alive. A lot of crisis moments with few pauses to reflect their immensity. The wise advice to return to the woods only remembered occasionally, often in crisis barefoot blistered hikes forced by a desperate need for change. Walking myself back out to nurse the wounds of inattention and keep giving.
What does any of this have to do with Piety? The Warp of the weave, it stood there offering me reminders and opportunities to remember and renew. Spirit never seems to Judge only offer the opportunity to sit in the mud puddle with the spilled contents of the backpack, carried too long. Often the mind rushes to debating what is salvageable and what can be dealt with now or shoved down to the bottom for later, the crisis. In the sitting though Spirit offers more, if we do not rush off to the whatever is calling. It offers the truth of the current reality, the Vision of its unsustainability . When I finally sat with it all at points through the summer, as others visions came to fruition and the true unsustainably of the current course permeated me, I moved through grief, I moved through anger. I am still moving through the grief and anger. Yet I also stated what I needed. I let go of visions and ideas and plans, I gave the dreams I had been beating others to try and help me make happen go back to the mud, squirrelling away a few too precious to let go into the backpack. I knew another winter in the Yurt as it currently sat filled to the brim with too much stuff held for tomorrow, with the daily grind of keeping things moving shifting to harder access, would invite death to knock at our door again. I opened to new possibilities and opportunities that were other peoples dreams. Suddenly we were putting an offer on a house.
The entire process had the same magical taste as the magic of The Forest House in Ottawa, coming to us in the wake of birthing Gene and the collapse of fitting the 5 of us in a 2 bedroom apartment with no yard. The obstacles falling away. We were accepted out of 3 others by a large pool of interested parties and then moving. It has only been 3 months since we took possession. The move has not been smooth, the plans for storing the Yurt giving up on as well despite the wear and tear it will endure. There is much that upon closer inspection is not what it appeared in the glossy eyed stage. Questions not asked, assumptions made forcing us to move quickly. Yet there are opportunities I have only started to see, if I stop in the Mud puddle with Spirit. If I continue to remember who I am and process the grief of the dreams I cannot sustain, and instead allow them to return to the mud. The ones I am not quite ready to part like odd trinkets, unsure of what they will be used for but too useful, or holding too precious a hope to let go of yet.
I am unsure of what this new unfolding is doing. In a new Water shed, a new river flows offerings to the same sea. In town with houses next door, a plot to Garden but not naked. Chickens left to my parents to Homestead, and dreams of Highland Cattle a glass trinket in my had. Spirit offers another opportunity to trust that it sees further and greater then I ever can. I don’t need to know where we are going, but I can recognize the warp in the weave when it sings. I am capable of sitting in the mud, with my spilled backpack and Spirit guiding me to trust. Yet, Piety is about cultivating space to sit with Spirit, to empty the backpack together regularly and assess in safe space without the mud. There is a time for sitting in mud puddles but it shouldn’t be the core place I remember my practice and connect to spirit. Conscious cultivation of space, Mud Puddles to Gardens. 2023 offered me many lessons in Piety and I judged myself for running from it, yet Spirit worked with whatever I offered Mud Puddles and all. Thank you 2023.