Faith Over Fear

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Faith Over Fear

The darkest part of the year is here. In ancient times these were considered liminal days, time out of time days, in-between worlds days. In the darkest moments of our lives, we have a choice. When confronted with the great unknown of what lay before us and the bones of what lay behind, we have a choice. It’s easy to feel lost in the dark. Despairing. Afraid. Much harder to trust that even as we stumble on, blind to what may come, we are actually being held by that same darkness.

Like a seed nestled deep in soil or a baby enveloped safely still in the womb, we are held by something we cannot see — a process designed for us to emerge as the light that we are.

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Oregon (Part 2)

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Oregon (Part 2)

Breitenbush was red dragon flies and hot silence, mornings before the sun rose and sleeping in a cabin in the burn zone like a new seed that knows nothing of fire or all the ways it might grow and eventually be destroyed.  Water and heat from the earth were my medicine, and the cold, cold river across the bridge that took the high scream out of my lungs as an offering.  I’d forgotten to bring one.  That’s okay because water always takes what it needs, I’ve noticed.  The deer that greeted me reminded me of the fawn that snuggled under our front porch of my childhood home for three days, wild and innocent.  I unplugged from everything and recharged in ways I didn’t know I needed, in ways I didn’t know I would need. 

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Oregon (Part 1)

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Oregon (Part 1)

The Columbia River called me.  I don’t know how or why.   I just went.  And hiked like a madwoman.  Like a woman who had no idea where the fuck she was going.  Like a woman who had something to prove to herself or maybe something to remember.  I hiked like a woman who had cracked under the weight of loss and grief.  I arrived around midnight from Maui and stayed in an awful motel just east of Portland, the kind where all the rooms reek of cigarette smoke.  I didn’t even bother turning down the sheet, just laid my travel blanket atop the bed and curled up for a few hours.  I hit the road early and caught my first view of the gorge.  It was breathtaking and mysterious and still calling so I began to make my way down waterfall alley, hike by hike as large birds of prey swooped and circled at the tree line.  The trees were burnt in places and I walked through echoes of blazes that devastated this landscape six years prior.  The forest was still reeling and growing anew at the same time.  I felt like I was in the right place.  After all, six years is not a long time.  It’s how long my mother’s been dead.  But looking at the char of some of the trunks, you’d think it just happened.  I treaded lightly.  My steps on the ground became a silent mantra.   Because I didn’t know what the fuck to say.  Or have anyone to say it to.  I took thirty thousand of them on that first day of my journey.

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