The Dark Mother?

“…to represent the underworld mother faithfully, you have to honor the emptiness and the loss. The nature mother becomes underworld queen. You gain your depth at a price: specifically, you lose some of your obvious maternal attitudes and become more complex. You give yourself both to others and to the quest for meaning and identity.” Thomas Moore – Dark Nights of the Soul

At some point I found myself weary of the perpetual effort for positive mothering, big bright sunlight sweet and gracious. Barf. Truly, barf. Life is dark and night and wounds and all the saddest slights we hoped not to experience. It’s not just the great, glorious swelling precious ooo lah lah we long for in our youth. It’s both/and. Motherhood is the same thing for me. My children have grown accustomed to my snarl, my tears, my invitations to what I “playfully” call the “menu of loss” I am more than happy to provide them when their hubris gets the better of them. We aren’t meant to present ourselves as simply this great bright sun. We mamas embody the forces of nature and life and we do it with a vision to help our children find their strengths, their resilience and their sobriety, their humility. This is where my life is these days and it’s not easy. But the rewards are huge. I have three children who articulate about life on levels that feed the soul. They are not afraid to go deeply into the loss of life itself because at some point I decided my task is to acquaint them with courage not by way of sunny delight but by way of “this is life…this is the shite that happens and we get to love and build beyond it…” See: I wrecked their worlds and faced the truth of my own soul. We’re all re-building. Divorce, financial disasters, complete overhaul. Roles are powerful when they embrace the necessary dark side, the real more real.

In pondering my roles lately and the reality of gratitude especially given these times of Thanksgiving, I see the preciousness of the dark times, of their inevitable giftings. I’ve had some pretty amazing generosities flow my way as we roil here in a tide of potential loss. Times are very tough. Life as my own “mommy” is not being so nice. She ain’t bringin’ me the release I need in some areas. And yes, before the dogma brigade comes along, let me say that I know well the need to make my own release, grow it from within yadda yadda. As true as all the “yadda yadda” is…sometimes some lives do not get the material needful to manifest some amazing things in as timely a fashion as preferred. And, in spite of even that, some lives don’t give up.

But mother, mother life is tossing me the dark with the light. And the light seems to be more and more a result of the hard times. The “dark” times. My next door neighbor, a mother fiercely and beautifully protective, nurturing and probably a good 15 years my junior knocking on my door… “Ruth.  If there is ANYTHING I can do for you…please…tell me. We don’t want to lose you…” GULP. We’re struggling to stay in our home. Struggling to make ends meet. Struggling even just to find the energy to do the basics, some of us. Me. But in the middle of it all, in the middle of this rolling tide from the best and worst of the dark mother/life is this wealth of gratitude I never thought I’d know and know so ruthlessly, relentlessly in spite of the ups and down. (And following rapidly on the heels of my mutterings to “god” shaking my head at the sky “you’re such a g.d. mofo…” And that is how joy finds a more authentic work…through the blasting expression of valid frustration.)

I waken daily to joy but it’s not so high. It’s right here in my core, knowing that whether a home is taken, or a job found, or health completely restored or not I can love with vision. I can receive with gratefulness. I can be part of something embracing the dark with courage.

This is where my heart is as a mother during this particular Thanksgiving holiday. The tremendous wealth that follows existential emptying becomes a feast in the night spilling onto tabletops filled with the usual but extraordinary fare…

On. With. It. And Happy Life, Y’all…

jruthkelly2 Comments

Revolution Required?

Assembly-line puppet-making educational factory manufacturing “minds” … those were the words I used in my protest of my youngest son’s treatment last year at a school that’s not all bad. I’ve apparently not managed to completely dilute my passion when dealing with the flaws of the system. And life isn’t making it any easier. Sometimes the color leaks into my on-the-spot advocacy. Sometimes the sense of being a hypocrite while standing up for what matters when it matters while still sending my kids into an impossible set-up WHILE telling them to “be yourself,” that sense of hypocrisy is…huge.

My daughter’s a sophomore in high school this year. She’s all done. Finished. Had enough. What’s the point? She can’t see the value. This is not unusual but it’s sad. Her articulation of the lack of meaningful, inspiring challenge, the overload of tedious work, the pointlessness of some of the lessons, the immaturity of some teachers, the inaccuracy of others is, all of it, overwhelming. What do you do, as a parent, about the contradictions, the good/bad, indifferent/inspiring? How do you honor the truth your child expresses (Yes! That teacher was, in fact, very immature to…) and maintain credibility as one insisting she continue to put up with the very things I encourage her to avoid BECOMING later on in life? Is it really possible? To maintain credibility? It seems to be working thus far only because I don’t hesitate to affirm whatever I can affirm of my children’s insights, most especially those insights exposing the murder (my daughter’s word) of learning and of inspiration, of creativity (again, my daughter’s choice of words). It’s doable. I’m doing it. But I’m wondering when the revolution? When the shift? When will this batch-producing education system be dismantled because the prototype is useless?

(Sir) Ken Robinson kindly and truthfully acknowledges that teachers are not to blame (some of them, forgive me, thoroughly enjoy the position of taskMASTER and slaveDRIVER and would keep the monster well fed for the next 2 centuries if you let them…revolution? what? just CONFORM NOW.), that the problem itself is hardwired into the system. He’s right. In fact, he says it beautifully here:

There is no cultural identity without loss of soul in this system and that is why my daughter calls it “murderous.” It boils down to seeing it for what it is, using what can be used in order to get the diploma to get the degree that might or might not facilitate a viable economic resourcefulness while making a friend or two along the way. Usually, for those who are aware, a friend or two who sees it all for what it is but continues to plod along is as “cultural” as it gets. How do you tell your child “Life is conspiring to bless you” when you’re asking them to tolerate bull for the hopes of a maybe payoff? It’s a wicked difficult sell requiring a few timely “illness” days and a heck of a lot of compassion without loss of backbone.

At this point, my sell consists of potent acknowledgement of the sham set-up and how our best bet is to use it for best possible outcomes while refusing to give up on what matters most. It doesn’t completely work. My children are required to lose touch with their bodies, with their originality, with divergent thinking. It does put me in the position of Court Jester and Queen Defiant with a touch of good old-fashioned trouble-maker who occasionally reminds them the appearance of conformity can really pay off. And let’s not forget the teachers who really truly care and make a huge difference within the monstrous mechanism. Hypocrite? I’ll take the label if that’s what is required to embody a revolution without actually sweeping in on them and rescuing them from oppression. I prefer to see myself as the facilitator of defection (in place) until the world makes for them a friendlier space (or until they create their own revolutions…). For a few years the ongoing welcome home wagon dialogue with my middle guy, my oldest son when he got in the car after school ran along the lines of: “Did you get in trouble today?” “No…” “WHAT?! Why NOT?! You’re a KID! Bend the rules! Don’t be good just to appear good. Be yourself.” (Not that my children are encouraged to be disrespectful or rude…but the system asks they lose the very soul of what it is to be human. I make it my task to keep them in remembrance and in practice.)

In the meantime, the cops haven’t confiscated my couch to prove that unlocked doors can make theft MUCH easier on the thieves (previous post re: lockers in middle school) and my kids have not lost their edge or their ability to see, feel, create and paint outside the lines. I suppose this is the best we can make of life’s outdated institutions. For now.

jruthkelly1 Comment

What To Fight For…

I’m licking wounds, growing stronger, settling into acceptance of who I am (a dynamic thing I must fight to keep up with and then give up on and then be visited by and then yes…this is life) and I can find few words for it. But. But the theme that keeps dogging me like a hound of Hades is this one issue – what to fight for.

I run to Thomas Moore’s Dark Eros, for whatever intuitive reason, and these are the pieces of synchronicity life speaks to me now, on this one issue:

“Life itself is both caring and hostile. We are born astride a grave, the hopeful swell of life an inevitable move toward death. Nature is lovely and vulnerable, and yet it is also cold-hearted and cruel, oblivious to human reasons for protection. To live this life with full participation in nature is to adopt its cruelty and vulnerability. Often it seems psychological problems center around this issue of participating in the Sadeian nature of reality. We back away from engaging in cruelty, but the harshness does not go away. We deny the victim our gift of power, and then we become the victims of that denied force. We cannot believe we are capable of the vulnerability a life episode asks for; we retreatk and then feel literally and utterly wounded.

[..]

If the individual human soul is torn between victimization and cruelty, the soul of culture also gets tangled in problems of power.

[..]

We have so humanized and rationalized the positive powers of life that only in pathology does the divine peek through.

[..]

..innocence split off from shadow is not innocence at all but only a posturing. Paradoxically, embracing Sade could ease conscience and guilt, and it could revivify social justice.

[..]

The shadow in human life cannot be brought home as long as we concretize it in some objectionable other. Like everything else, evil is assimilable by soul only after it has been subjected to a poetic alchemy, refined into fantasy and feeling instead of personality and emotion, and woven into the fine tapestry of imagined experience.

     It’s fine to be imaginative in articulating the details of a sensitive life, but the real nub comes with the presence of aggression, vicitimization, and power. Will we ever cease reacting to victimization with increased violence? Will we ever realize that strength of heart is to be found only at the deep end of the well of vulnerability? Only the person or nation open to influence, dependent, relying, often disabled can know the deep muscle that grants effectiveness, creativity, confidence, and security. Only the allowance of failure breeds moments of success.”

I keep coming home to vulnerability. It doesn’t tell me what to fight for except those components in life that give room for vulnerability between peers and allow strength to grow and withstand the strengths of others, however lovely or not. We fight for the dynamics of power that give us room to be vulnerable with a peer without being destroyed or devoured by their shadows. We fight for the dynamics of power that give us room to grow, hopefully without destroying anyone else, without hindering their own progress. Those “dynamics of power” are simply the muscles we use to open ourselves up and be real in the moment, to push past the internal resistance, to push past a bit of the resistances in others. Those dynamics of power are the ones we utilize to retreat until a safer day, while the ones we long to be vulnerable with or open up to are still learning just how potently reactionary they are.

I had occasion to fight this week and I left it alone. And a noble fight it would have been. But I realized the message was deeper. I pulled back after much tremendously ugly and rabid frothing at the mouth with rage long tied to things I have still to redeem. It was, if you take it apart, pretty small. But not really. Not when you look at the dynamics of it. The messages. The energies. The powers. The victims. The perps.

My son’s locker was broken into at school. By. A. Teacher. But it’s their policy. But it’s not their policy to take, seize and possess personal items. But they did. He went to his locker to put his books away and the locker shelf his sister had given him was gone. He mentioned it to a friend and was overheard by a classmate. She informed him that the teachers regularly check to see if a student has left the locker on the last number of the combination (hence, unlocked). If so, they take a personal item without telling the student, put it in a closet and wait. So, he went to his teacher. She had broken it, his personal property, in the attempt to remove it. Her commentary, after volunteering to pay for the item: “I hope you see this as the lesson it is meant to be. Do not leave your locker unsecure.”  [insert image of mocking, incredulous redhead saying “what kind of stupidly revealing statement is that?”]

Vulnerability is as much a right as is protection. And choice is something I find even just as valuable. If choice is something that needs to be submitted in lieu of greater gains, then hopefully that choice is submitted willfully and with full awareness of what will be gained, what will be lost, what will be required. Scenarios, environments, timing, situational “ethics” have their meaning. But when? And. What to fight for when? And how? And. When your heart is beating, head is pounding, hands are shaking and the voice is trembling, it’s time not to fight but to retreat and discern which fight you’re spoiling for at the time. Epic reactions mean epic past unfinished business. Usually. Especially. When. A. Locker. Is. Involved.

My son was not upset by it. We decided to leave it alone and keep it for later reference if the need should arise to show a trend (this does seem to happen). But I was wiped out. It hit on a deep wellspring of pain from my past, one I keep working to heal. An issue so perfectly symbolized by the locker and the teacher and. And the broken personal yes. Well, I have no recourse, no re-imbursement. Only one thing. The fight to keep myself vulnerable when it matters most. The fight to recognize that the beauty I experienced of the one involved, of the whole thing is not gone because of a betrayal. But must simply be accepted along with it. While I keep my safe distance and acknowledge my longing to do anything but that (and I don’t want to attack).

And I surf the internet, scan the news and find one is going to burn a book. In reaction. To fight for something. But he fights himself. He fights the very thing he treasures and has no idea of it. And nations toss words and it all swirls in frustration and stupidity supreme and all I can say is this:  We are vulnerable. What will we make of it?

jruthkelly6 Comments

Freewill Pedals Fast…

My youngest son kept me up last night past midnight, expressing his feelings and pouring out his heart about life and particularly about the question of life after death. I knew we were coming ’round to a place of renewed peace and joy when the emotions had been spent thoroughly and these words came out of his mouth and the sun rose a smile as he spoke: “When I ride my bike, it’s like I’m not me, I’m the bike. I’m one with the bike…” We’d discussed the failure of language and how it suggests reality as only what the mind can conjure through words. And how inadequate the comprehension of life itself when relying on concepts created by minds not our own. Actually, he’d brought that little factoid up himself. Wow, what a scramble for “reality” and totems and “truth.” He knows what his mom believes about life and the divine. In the process of sifting through the turmoil, I endeavored to open his mind to now, to letting go of fear while cherishing the fleeting and yet precious reality of life. This is a boy who can poke holes in every belief system out there and yet he wants something to believe in. I aksed him: When you were in the womb, did you stop and ask and wonder about the beyond? Did you fret about losing the rhythmic sound of heart and world around you? Did you even “know?” For some reason, this particular line of gentle questioning kept bringing him to peace. The sense of being released into all the best rest and humor finally came flooding into our dialogue. He wouldn’t stop gabbing on and on about life, about connection, about nature, about the earth and how it is we don’t fall off of it as it turns and. And, I suggested he study physics. The will had quickly, resiliently found comfort and was off on that bike flying down the hill fast with a smooth grace. The will…so vital…

Healing The Will

The heart of every human holds
The feelings and the dreams
Of deepest aspirations,
Freewill’s creative esteem.
The urge toward higher purpose,
The drive to create from grace,
Unlimited power of expression,
The potential of the human race.
Yet, the side roads are many,
Blighted by denial and fear,
Refusal to express the feelings,
Until numbness blocks our tears.
Lost in our machinations,
Yet craving release from pain,
Surrender may not come sweetly,
But the will can be regained.
The sacredness of being lies
In feeling all that appears,
Without applying judgments
To the joys or to the fears.
Trusting every emotion as
Something we created to feel,
Then expressing every feeling,
Allows the will to heal.

Jamie Sams – Earth Medicine, Ancestors’ Ways of Harmony for Many Moons, pg. 224

So…it was a long day and it had begun with my focus on writing about the will and particularly about healing the will as a foundational work of personal growth. My 8 year old son’s post bedtime struggles highlighted the importance of expression in safeguarding true will, of working through the turmoil we all face when questioning life, when trying to give freewill the freedom needful to infuse our lives with vibrance. So often belief systems and programs are tossed at us in honest endeavors to provide comfort but how much ownership of truly personal peace is possible when this occurs? Then again, how much of that future ownership of personal peace is inspired by those very attempts to bring comfort? It’s sometimes a tightrope walk across a divide we cannot truly fathom. But we are drawn to it regardless. If we can find peace in what life is, in what life can be, we can find something no lack of proof can shake or otherwise unhinge. But we don’t get there by running away from the expressions of doubt, of fear, of appreciation for how fleeting life truly is. And this is what had sparked my son’s turmoil, his own sudden comprehension of the transitory nature of the moment itself. And up to that point, it had been a feast.

We, as children and as adults, need a place from which we can reach into the beyond, a place of security where we can say “I don’t know how to believe that when…” … where we can express our doubts and still find sure footing. Stability. I kept wanting to tell my son, “It’s ok. Trust me. There’s a God. We’ll all be together after life. I promise.” But it struck me as a violation of his will, an abortion of his own processes of comprehension and growth. He was too focused on the fact that there’s no proof. And I admitted that I cannot know what will be or if there is a beyond. But neither could I deny a sense of the mother and father heart of God or all the possible projections that very sense may be. And yet, it still is and I can live with it in appreciation of the wealth it provides but not in denial of all that is truly uncontrollable in life, the vast unknown. I can still sense and know that within is a depth of the divine untapped and eternal.

We discussed different attitudes about life after death, some philosophies and religion. He had suggested that to call a tree a tree is to lose or even just shut out what that particular expression of creation is. I grinned at the Tao of his articulation.  Where did he finally land? With a question… “how do we know we aren’t God?”

The will needs to run free, to live with the courage to say what is rumbling in the heart, to fly with intention beyond the programs that give us ideas and the words that seek to grasp what could never be fully grasped.  On and into life being lived and becoming one with what we can never truly name, pedalling fast free, knowing self as feeling in motion, feltness supreme.

jruthkelly11 Comments

Bring On The Song…

I’m heading for the hills, so to speak (and literally), and will be MIA for a while. This song is very slow, almost painfully so but the words sing my heart at this time. And I’m low on words lately. (Stunned, too. My daughter drove me home for the first time today. She did very well but I swear. It was just last week, wasn’t it? She was only 4.) So, bring on the wonder…bring on the song…

jruthkelly5 Comments

Love’s Labor

This past Saturday my youngest son and I had the pleasure of working for hours (and hours) on the back yard, particularly focusing on a bush whose original voice had been drowned out by nature’s noisy weed-bush volunteers. Throughout our work he literally gloried in the satisfaction of the process, saying many times “This is so awesome, Mom. I’m glad we’re doing this!” We were using tools: hedgetrimmers, pruner, saw. Mom on the ground hacking away at the base of a junk bush. Son using trimmers to help the process along. He was able to appreciate the progression from overgrown bush to original intent. And the co-labor. And this is the same guy who came out earlier “Mom, can I mow with the Reel mower while you mow?” I’d resorted to the fuming horror noise-monster since the lawn had gotten too thick. He wanted to mow. Co-laboring. 8 years old. These things matter, apparently. He clearly joyed in the teamwork. It’s what makes him feel more alive, purposeful. And we’re (he and I) consciously working on helping him be with/by himself. As the youngest of 3 highly connected, affectionate children, he hasn’t had to figure out how to just enjoy himself. He goes into a bit of a tailspin when big brother is not available. Mom’s doing a ton of homework lately or. Or she’s dead tired. (But she sure does try.) It’s the curse of the youngest, born into a brood and forming the identity within that sense of connectedness. Sometimes, no matter how much I give, I have to look at him and say “Go make yourself happy, love. You’re a great guy to hang with. Enjoy just you.” One day big brother will be off on his own… It’s a tightrope walk sometimes, determining how much co-laboring is needed and how much life just needs to do the work without parental influence.

piled high

We pulled a mountain of overgrowth out of that poor bush. I noted, after our mutual labor, that his ability to be with himself increased dramatically. To be content alone. Long stretches of time spent content with just himself. Was it that we had such concentrated hard labor together? We sure have cuddled a plenty, chatted a ton and. This. Filled. Him. Up. Was it that we accomplished together? These things seem obvious in hindsight but it’s not always easy to see the need until after it’s filled (and when you’re already working on so much else!). I spent concentrated time creating with my son. He internalized, through that experience, a sense of himself as effective, as a wealth of resource and strength. How much opportunity does our world give us for these gems? So much convenience in the face of nature’s insistence that we roll up our sleeves and dive in. It’s too easy to do things alone. I was not going to ask for help. Period. He leapt at the chance. A chance for working together. How do you facilitate the emergence of a soul into a healthy balance? How do you clear out the weeds of life’s overwhelming moments, the compensatory parts you’ve relied on all your life, the ones you made in too much time alone? Well, for a fruit-bearing bush, tools are essential… 

muscles required

It’s tough to know, from child to child, what will tap the resources within, what will draw up the wellsprings of contentment and what will simply isolate. A grand adventure with so much risk. And so many opportunities for even my own influences to overtake the original pattern of soul. I’m often reminded of how I felt with my firstborn’s arrival. After a week of realizing her vulnerability I wanted to run (and was in love with her too!), gutted and filleted by the truth of how royally one can hinder a life. And yet, life. Lives. On. And the tools needful are taken in hand, the weeds cleared gradually and…

scraggly promise

…the prickly blooming fruit-bearing creature gets a chance. Thorns and all. And the roots of those weedy influences? Hopefully they’ll be eclipsed by growth of the blooming wonder. If not, we still have those trimmers…

Sometimes. Sometimes I think this is the best we have. To just stay with it. To give the opportunity for that original seed to have full expression. It can be a sweaty toil of love. And appropriate that a son would share the journey and the work. Ah, and with such delight he had to take the photos of our progress. And it’s about the moment, about what is pregnant now. You can’t manufacture these opportunities. They happen. In fact, gee. The next day? Did he want to have a lovely bonding time dragging the branches up for the city to take? No! :0)

Guess what? It’s all good…

jruthkelly8 Comments

More Accidental Grace

Where do you go when no one’s there to lift the other side of the couch, to move it? Who do you call? You tug, stumble, scramble, sweat. It’s moved. It happens alot in my world. No whining. I chose this. But the appreciation these times evoke is priceless. Appreciation for kind words, compassion, mercy. Grace.

What are these influences, these human realities we label? Grace? I could write a lifetime and not convey it. Bird song. Therein is grace. It stops on my chimney just outside and overhead and calls down a song sounding like the light at the end of the tunnel when I’m about to give up. Ah ha ha…sing. Waking me up in the morning on the tree outside my window. A lilt and my heart thrills. I hear it. It tells me: Life is here. Now and around this bend and beyond the sense of isolation. The phone rings…”Hey Ruthie!!! I needed to hear your voice!” More grace. Songs. I left Georgia 10 years ago. I don’t miss it. But my dearest friend, sisters and parents are there. And more friends and. I’m here.

Then sitting down after swallowing lumps of frustration down the throat (for some reason, ultra-sensitive lately -full moon), sighing with the protein bar, chowing down in-between classes and a kind soul walks up…are you an artist? I laugh. All I can do is laugh. Am I? I write. I dot. I study. I mother. I am. But do I feel myself qualified for a label just yet? No. Will I ever? I looked at him “Well…I do dots. Maybe that makes me an artist.” I’m longing. Longing for the feel of a paintbrush these days. On the canvas. Up there in my room in the attic. Quiet. Birds singing. But school hounds my energy, commanding and demanding a rectification of “lost” time.

Ha. No loss. I tell myself this every morning. It’s not that you’re late.

I reach into my bag. Book bag full and there. Slam. Exam next. Oh. Ho. Ho. Last night I was up to my eyeballs in being the compassion and mercy for my youngest son who had not had the help he needed up to that point on a project due the next morning. My morning of classes. And. I forgot the exam now looming, losing myself in bolstering boy writing words in their place on paper filled with Crayola clues. No study. Precious little time. I am. Labeled. A. Student. Mom. Artist? Writer? Aspiring lover. Of. Freedom.

I jump up and run, but it’s a jaunt and not really much more than a fast walk. To the library. Everything is disjoint jumble hurry hurry. Where’s my class pal? Where is he? The one with the long blonde curls and big smile. I find him in the library…”Is is true? Did I actually forget we have an exam?” Grins. Oh yeah. Study, cram, spin in circles and slam down at the desk, drumming fingers, wishing my teacher were not so graciously covering critical parts of the test for us (how kind!!! really!!! she gave me 4 answers right then and there before the test began!). But I’ll be late. I have to get my daughter to physical therapy. This is the class I was going to leave early to take her for her time of “terror” with knee strengthening rigors. Don’t get me going on the knees. And the load she bears just knowing the story of generations producing her own story. She is courage and her knees. They rat us all out. That’s how I feel. Responsible. Her knees hurt because I….? What have I not done fast enough? Damn, and if she had some terminal illness? Am I this hard on Ruth? What about my daughter? Does she feel it and take it on her own back? Does she know I love her? She does. She knows. Gulp. Lump. Throat. Push. Pencil on multiple choice (hallelujah) exam. I think I got an A, actually. Accidental grace? Somewhere way back there on the path I bought the lie that any illness in my family, in my children is my fault. Forgive me, mothers all. I’m learning to lose the worst label.

Test is over. Rush. Run. I’m late. It took longer than I expected. I’m huffing up one. two. three. four. flights of stairs and talking into my cell. Hurry, get ready. We’re going to be late. Stress. Fret.

No.

I won’t. What if I round the bend and that’s the end? What if? I look up at the blue and I slow down. There has to be compassion awaiting. It has to start right here. In my step. With myself. This is the best I have. I can’t be all. No label fits. Life rips them, shreds them all in tatters when you stitch carefully so neatly even just one (mom). Those ideas grasp at me, begging me to keep, to hoard, to fret over how they don’t fit just yet on my chest: Artist. Writer. Student. Mom. I breathe deep, drive and strive to…rest. Then. I give up. And peace finds me. A series of stops and starts and awakening of daughter and out the door. We’re very late. First session. Not a good impression. Blah. The cell rings. “Is this Ms. Kelly?!” “Yes, I am so sorry… just turning in to the hospital now. Had a…” “Oh! It’s OKAY! No problem, really. I’ll be outside to meet your daughter. Just drop her off. No worries…” She’s mothering me. She’s mothering my daughter and I’ve seen her only once. She oozed grace even then. We get there and she’s overflowing compassion. I realized that at every turn lately that’s what I run into. Smack, slam, stomp land into…grace. I didn’t earn it. It just is.

It’s that simple. No steeple story high into the sky producing good people. Life does it. You either break or bend. You either reach out a hand of compassion or stand rigid, bracing against your own humanity and. Life. Or. You live in love. Rambling on…

jruthkelly10 Comments

Treeclipse…

Oh how high beyond
anything posing sky
you
birth the best in life.

Oh how deep beyond
beseeching seep
you
reach the rest of source.

Grow woman-child, grow up
you
me
we and be

all that glories in shameless living
spilling, flowing all

midwife of soul

child-like resilience
in the face of life’s hardest stories,

branches wrapping ’round us all
birthing newness and wisdom
in those bestowed with parenting
wonder,

wonder wise

wily, winsome
glory-you, tree-song
singing us all to renewal.

jrk – in awe of my temporary role of facilitator and witness of the emergence of one magnificent soul.

jruthkelly19 Comments

Re-Group

It’s quiet today, inside and out. My kids feel it, sitting in front of the fire in our tiny living room, waiting. For what? Maybe I’m the one waiting and I see it in them. We’re sifting through science project ideas, watching the rain fall and generally holding on to the restfulness of the day. But I have this wistful turmoil within, this sense of things quieting just long enough for me to begin again. But not to begin the same story. 

warmth
the pause

Is this how a plant “feels” before breaking the surface of soil? If so, this is not the first emergence in my soul. What is it? Where will it lead? It’s time to re-group, to renew, to re-know and re-establish beyond what was sure even just last month. There is something unique about divorce and parenting, going back to school and meeting newness everywhere.

The hands that held my children, the hands that began in a marriage, are chopped off by divorce. But the hands that hold them beyond all loss, those are the hands now growing, that learn to re-know them as children of life and not so much of a marriage. This has been going on for years now and it progresses beautifully as I find myself beyond the identity I had before. Even when that marriage is thoroughly over, this growth of the hands, of the heart that holds them flourishes and grows beyond every accomplishment, beyond the ideas of who they are or will be. Or who I thought I was. Or. It’s about parenting as one who facilitates without capturing, accomodates and guides. But we get to, all 4 of us, re-learn our relating and our growing as we are changed by life. Who is “mama” as a student? Who is “daughter” as a wise soul weathering some big changes? Who is “son” who now needs dad far more than ever and how does he hold his mom? If I hold to them as the child of once upon a time and then, they have no one solid to be with, no one here but a prop clinging to an idea…as they grow beyond.

But…that’s not the story here because for some reason life won’t let me fade to blank.  I have to sometimes go to ground, hide away and find a place to re-work the hands that hold even the idea of myself, not just who I am as a mom or…or…

Not much of a post today but it’s life. And it’s pausing pregnant promise beyond the toil, the stretch to reach with new hands. And rest with heart learning life anew.

jruthkelly5 Comments

Friday’s Feast

They clamber climb
grasp the branches and grip
the heart smiling down below,
grinning up at glory two.
Laughter falls, floats leafy down
around my face and…
Beautiful
Find The Treasures

I soar under their calls,
flying inside.

Sweetness
Two Treed

Filled with something
much deeper than flimsy pride
something more like joy’s tides washing…
washing all the wrecks away
in waves, waves of day’s dawn across faces alive,
free, smiling down at me. 

jrk 

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