Dear Miracle

Setting free the beautiful truth inside.


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Good Morning, World!

From my humble garden, it’s a beautiful
Good Morning, World!

What a way to start my days, out here with the flowers đŸŒ»đŸŒș and almost ripe blueberries, my herbs and ferns and my gorgeous tree. 🩋

Well, the other day, a hummingbird 🐩 stopped by for a visit; and while writing these words just now, the hummingbird returned, pausing in mid air next to me to say hello.

And there’s a small throated little Bushtit bird🐧 that perches for extended visits on my fence, and. whom, the other day flew into—sweetly rustling my glass chimes–when I was feeling discouraged đŸ„€. ,đŸŽ¶

Everyday my chorus of birds and trees and bright flowers and trailing vines are faithful to restore a tired body. What a way to greet the day!

And did I say Thank You?! ❀

(Photo by S. Sawyer)


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Dying Seasons

Something I wrote a few years back. This life all around me faithful to provide carefully positioned sentinels that stand at the gate against any misery that would seek to make a permanent address inside me–a reminder of where my true north lies, a pointer home saying “This way to your heart”. 

 

Driving down the street the other day,

I detected that fall had had her way—

and under freshly shorn trees were luminous

yellow-gold pools where sunshine had accumulated

—a riotous cornucopia of puddled sunshine in

brief reprieve between darkening days,

like some kind of joy

suddenly rising up to greet me in the dying leaves.

It left me happy for days.

 

My life has it dying seasons, as well.

Yet the art of dying often leaves me wanting,

absent without poise or polish.

futile attempts made at scooping up decay

of that which needs to die, staring, bare

limbed, at loss, shivering in the wind.

If there is joy-filled reprieve, I often fail to notice it.

 

This letting go business—I’m not as graceful

as the golden dying leaves.

But what I’m counting on is that spring

always comes and old attitudes, beliefs and judgments

about how life is supposed to be

serve as perfect compost for my re-creation.

 

S. Wolfington


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Water and Salvation

How completely unlike herself, you think, smiling,

and by now you know better than that— Grace

juxtaposing beneath the black swirl

of clouds while she in haste unfurls herself,

presses hard against the glass,

tap, tap, tap, demanding,

Quick, come look, good morning! Hurry please!

 Looks at her watch,

 We haven’t got all day!

 Covers thrown, running out the door to see

her sun struck glow in the trees, alighting the hills in flame,

mere minutes before the drenching rain.

 

You’re left aghast, and she trails off as though nothing had happened, and

you suspect she’s been lying in wait all night.

 

This, a singular act of benevolence you’re chosen for, again and again.

Your fate, you say.

Striking when you’re not looking, she knows where you are.

And suddenly she’s there begging for witness, posing this way and that,

when you were just minding your business,

demanding you grab your camera or pen.

 

She devastates your heart with her wildness.

Bearer of all that’s untamed, you’ve become uncultivated, mad—too much

for any one person you say.

You must give it away, standing on corners, reciting her scriptures

in lines and pictures—offering her sweet-scented petals, like small prayers,

like small acts of kindness to anyone

in desperate need of water or salvation.

 

Shoshana  Wolfington


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Before You Can Fly

Just as the caterpillar thought the world was ending, it became a butterfly.

Before becoming a butterfly–you have to let life bury you inside its chrysalis.

You have to turn into mushy goo. You have to lose all resemblance to your former self.

You have to get uncomfortable. You have to let go of old ways. You have to learn a whole new way of being yourself.

Not everyone is willing.

Yet the secret is that the earth needs caterpillars as much as butterflies! And caterpillars aspiring towards butterflyhood…

…and all the things you might not think it needs for reasons you probably can’t begin to imagine.

The earth looks vastly different from the ground than the air. And we need the ground and air both the same.

So if you’ve made it to butterfly stage, keep talking anyway. You survived this far when you didn’t think you were going to make it.

Keep talking love to the world. Say how it is from up there, from the trees and bright blue of the day. Some will get it, some won’t. Either way, it’s okay. 

You never know who might be listening.

-S. Wolfington


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“Rooted in stars and deep earth, trees remain. Oh, to live more like that!”


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After raven’s wings,

I saw her from my window atop the world.

Flapping through the spacious stemmed Spruce,

the wide skirt of midnight wings catches me.

I see that you see me, the Spruce said.

Trees talk like that when they are seen.

I was taken aback.

The life of this tree further pressed into me.

It had secrets to tell and was eager to talk to anyone listening.

We see it all.

We know many things—even where the bodies are buried,

but we don’t tell.

You rushing by—we hear your thoughts.

We could say a lot about that.

 

Keepers of light, protectors of life, home to many things.

we bear witness to time,

Indigenous, code talkers, we live from our roots.

Until the axe comes or the beetle,

we really don’t mind standing here at all,

while you fly by barely giving us a glance.

 

We hold a space for your grief and your pain,

which we gladly exchange for love—you only need ask.

We, an underground network, talk a lot.

But not in the language you speak.

You have to press your ear to our trunks, bury your toes in the mud

and just stop.

You have to want what we’ve got.

You have to listen closely.

Indeed.

I could say more. There’s a lot to tell, but I’ll leave it at that.

Shh
it’s a secret, and you can listen for yourself.

S. Wolfington


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The Way of Angels

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  I am a river sluicing past canyon walls,

  splashing at the bends before 

  settling down again.

  Little whitecaps belie the deep undertow

 of quiet and knowing repose

  rushing through my belly below.

And following a predestined path set before

over a million years and more,

I do not hammer or drive into the stone 

at my side—it is with instinctive ease

that I bend and twist and glide.

I have no need to resist what lies ahead

as I wash on by.

Let the howling winds chip away the stone,

let the rain drive a wider channel—

 I am going the way of angels.

 

© 1997 Shoshana Wolfington


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Wild Roses

Wild Roses2We are all wild roses

growing in reckless disarray far

from the trellis with its measured lines and squares.

Out of control and knee deep in weeds and fallen leaves—

the rich compost of soil below.

Insects that come to feast on our decay,

is perfection, indeed.

Indeed, everything is trying to help us live

even in our dying.

 

Give up trying to sanitize your life away.

Life never works like this.

You are not as together as you would like to believe.

Give up your dreams of enlightenment—

let it find you while you go out and live.

Fall down and get up again—let it be worse or better than

you ever imagined.

 

Dear, you must surrender to the beauty in everything

before you can really know anything.

 

© 2015 Shoshana Wolfington


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Making Out with Mickey Hargitay

Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay at home (circa late 1950s)WHAT I REMEMBER IS JAYNE. Jayne Mansfield, that is—the bursting at the seams, large bosomed, blonde bombshell and sexpot of the 60’s. The Hollywood star with the heart shaped pool in her backyard lived a large life in my mind. I wanted to be her. I was nine or ten playing house in my bedroom—as Jayne Mansfield, of course, stepping into the cool darkness of my closet to make out with an imaginary, muscle ripped Mickey Hargitay, while my girlfriends, all the while sighing and moaning, languished on my bed waiting for me to come to my senses and come out of the closet.

Then one day she was beheaded. I was devastated. Riding in the front seat of her car, slamming into and under the backside of a semi-truck, and
off went her head—I imagine right into the back seat! Just like that.

I imagine that she believed she still had a lot more making out with Mickey left to do, but as you know in all things, they end. Time runs out, and all you’ve ever done is all you’re ever going to do.  And besides all that, I had already grown tired of making out with Mickey and was feeling the intensity of my puberty bearing down on me in the crush of feelings I had towards the boy down the street.

So much innocence left behind as the crush of life began to have its way with me. I almost succumbed to it more times than I care to say. Lucky for me, I made it this far into my sixties. Surprised to be here now, I was sure I would die before I was fifty. My entire adult life was white hot with extreme busyness and caretaking, and then total collapse—all of which I believed to be a badge of honor I wore proudly.

While at lunch the other day, my friend, Mystic Meena (whose odometer is getting ready to roll over to seventy), happened to remark on a sixty-seven year old actor that had passed away recently. Meena related how television pundits had observed after his passing that at least he had lived a long, full life—to which my friend exclaimed, “Bullshit!” When I was thirty, sixty-seven was definitely old—and death not so unexpected—that is, of course, unless you are sixty-seven. Unless you are ready for it, the pronouncement of death always comes as a surprise at any age. I don’t feel done yet.

Here I am, and the sun is beginning to dip in the sky. There isn’t a whole life left in front of me as I have a  series of “holy shit” realizations that I’ve got to begin now if I want to find and use my real voice. My dreams are still the same. It’s just that I have a little less physical energy to realize them with. Maybe the point of the body sliding past the apex of youth is this: it compels you towards your realness. I don’t know for certain. It’s just a hunch I have.

Now that the leaves are beginning to turn into blazing yellows and crimson reds and oranges, into their most flagrant and final stand for beauty, I am wondering how I didn’t see there could be so much splendor in moving towards that inevitable final breath of falling from the tree. What a metaphor to our lives—the grace-filled allowing, the gentle welcoming of age, the coming home to ourselves, finally. Perhaps, the leaning into our wisdom years, of spreading our brightly colored canopy over the lives of those coming up after us as way-showers is what really matters. Personally, I don’t want to waste it, not a single drop, not a single brilliant colored leaf of it between now and the time whatever pronouncements over my impending demise are made.

I am heading towards my glory years; and it going to take some careful planning and execution as I begin to re imagine myself, playing smarter, not harder. There is still time enough whether it be one year or forty years.  I cannot take my body for granted anymore. I cannot ignore and punish it. As long as I am able, there is a strict requirement for honor and listening, then supplying it with the necessary rest, nutrition and nurturance it requires. In this one moment I have been gifted. It almost didn’t happen.

Whatever has happened in my life has brought me full circle.  I am lucky to get the chance to have a “do over” in the last act of my life, playing the part of me rather than someone else. My fear, in whatever time is left, is leaving this life realizing I never had the courage to live an authentic life.

Admittedly, I am scared. It’s a moment by moment thing requiring a firm commitment. Holes must be plugged in order to enter into right relationship with myself. Gone is the bent towards extremism in my thoughts and actions, doing everything at once or nothing at all. It is not mine to single-handedly save the world.

If I want to live out the richness and the depth of all that has brought me here, I must practice sacredness and gratitude in the gentle or not so gentle breath of each day, in allowing, in letting go, in lightening up, and in laughter, and last but not least, in the flow of words that find their way from my heart to my fingertips. I am rising up and up into this voice that has been given me, flowering quietly or noisily, vibrantly and brilliantly. I am practicing freedom, using the only voice I have to set this prisoner free.

 


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The Ocean in a Drop of Water

Ocean in a Drop3I am but a string, upon which all my memories

are strung,

upon which all my existences run.

Jeweled beads one by one rest on me,

though I am not the beads.

Memory to memory, life to life and all that lies between,

I am the string, the ocean in a drop of water—

not separate from.

The same string that runs through you and me,

the thread of being that knits the seams of everything.

Woven of light, the exhalation of God weaving through

me and you, the stars, a child’s laughter, a grieving mother,

the deepest sea.

There is no other but the breath of God.

 

I’ve been here forever, so have you.

 

© 2014 Shoshana Wolfington


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Looking Nothing Like That

Letting go & Falling off cliffLove has a way of entering the back door

of your life

when you least expect it.

When you had your life precisely charted out,

your keys in hand, your perfect plans,

while walking out the front door,

when suddenly, BAM!

 

the back door slams against the wall,

like a hurricane coming in.

I was just leaving, you said.

You had to lay down your keys

and your map—because what just came in looked nothing

like that,

but what came in had its own plans for you.

 

While standing there, you’d never guess, looking at the mess,

it was only love come

to save you.

Resistance is futile, it said, surrender best.

 

But of course, it might take a while to learn that.

And when you finally get it

while it’s got you, this thing of your undoing,

this decimator of plans,

it becomes sweetness in your hands,

and the whole splendored universe moves

inside of you.

You wonder how it is you never saw such an endless

midnight sky blinking back at you.

 

Love is a shape-shifting trickster in ways you’d never conceive,

can take you to dizzying vistas you’ve never seen

on some crazy and crooked paths.

 

Love says,

It’s not about what you think it is. It’s more than that.

Love comes to bust down your doors and walls,

shake possibility loose in your mind,

get you to move beyond your self-imposed boundaries

as a citizen of the stars

into your own feral nature.

 

Out beyond the dictates of decorum or certain civilities

waits your aching passion,

but first you must learn to surrender

whatever safety

you think you have, then leap

from the precipice of that life.

 

© 2014 Shoshana Wolfington


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A Woman of Many Names

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I am a woman of many names.

A life’s collection, in fact,

tried on in dressing rooms of elation,

false starts and infatuations, premises

designed for the backs of others.

Trying things on in ideas or people, in places I’ve been.

Discerning what fits or not, what’s priced too high,

beside what rings genuinely so

in the clear bell of my soul.

Some names remain—names I wear still.

Some interchangeable, suited well.

A collection of ideas coalesced, a coupler of connecting notes,

the jarring timpani, the repetitive litany, the well-choreographed song;

and you must know

life has come down to this in these years of gold—

I’m still the same girl I came here for.

Notes off key now and then, I was never lost, always known,

the soul of which knew well where I need to go.

It has come down to here and now, stronger for the places I’ve been,

I’m a full playing orchestra not done until the fat lady sings in clothes that fit,

with trails to be walked upon, and dreams that resound loud and strong

inside the clear ringing bell of my soul.

 

© 2014 S. Wolfington


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Talking to the Rocks in My Head

Curmudgeon Rock

Some years back, I attended a “Shamanism 101” weekend workshop. Among several things I learned was how to read a rock.  Crazy, huh?  That’s what I thought, too.  Not having tried it since, I was curious to find out if it’s just the rocks talking in my head or if it’s for real, and so I have decided to have another go at sharpening my rock reading skills. From my garden, I’ve selected a quite ordinary, nondescript looking rock. (It’s the one in the center of the picture with the burnt-out eye sockets.) Sitting it on the table, I begin to examine its rugged exterior.  Going so far as to get my magnifying glass out, squinty-eyed, I peer studiously at this triangular shaped rock.  Hmm
what is this?   Shapes start to form upon the rock.  Am I seeing things?  Have I officially lost it entirely?  I laugh at what my family would think if they could see me now.

It’s as if there is a kind of alchemical force at work in this rock as it begins to shape shift right in front of me.  Here buried into its craggy, triangular shaped face is a burnt out looking eye—could this be a kind of scorched All Seeing Eye from too much light pouring through?   Now aligning in a place next to the first eye is another eye forming.   Between there’s a hump nose, and below an inverted V shaped mouth.  I can see there’s no easily winning over the affections of this rock as it seemingly studies me in return.  Could there be some semblance of personality in this little craggy curmudgeon?

Ah, now redeeming itself, I see “two” cat heads with whiskers, no less, on the one side of its head; a tree on the top side; a kind of earth on the underside.  Feminine wisdom, it says to me; there’s the masculine, too, yin and yang balancing in the number two.  Could it be there is a need for more balance in my life?  This unassuming and down-to-earth rock certainly has quite a bit to say.

Feeling silly, but after a bit, I think I’m forming a relationship with this rock—this rock that is born of great struggle from the Mother Earth herself. Disconcertingly, I also begin to feel as if I’m being scrutinized by the All Seeing Eye looking back at me.  I look again—it’s been a long journey from where it began.  There are gouges and scrapes dug deep in its skin; there is the complementary feminine and masculine energy and the tree of life as it reaches toward its divinity.  There are roots and rocks, death and rebirth, and flecks of crystal like tiny stars that hint brightly of heaven buried inside.

Fitting so neatly in the palm of my hand, this crazy little rock must have a great many stories to tell.  It’s weighty and in a moment, grounds me, ties me to the earth, then floats me to the stars.  What has it seen?  What does it know in its density?  In geologic time, how old might it be? Born from erupting, spewing volcanoes from earth below, their red hot magma in long rivers cooling into wide corridors of land, shaped and shifted by ferocious winds, massive floods and so many cataclysmic things over millions of years?  Full of gouges and scrapes, it’s been a long journey here to my hand.

In some crazy metaphorical sense, I see it kind of like my life.  What wisdom or healing would surface while I in stillness sit?  At what point would the primal soup of remembering my own divinity come forth?  Gazing in gratitude at the miracle of my own midnight stars, might I find my heart giving up secrets of its own?  Traveling past soil and skin, what discovery would I make about myself that is surprising or beautiful?

What privilege this life, this body and soul born of earth and stars, rooted deep in rock, infinite ray of light traveling far to be here now; this holy moment looking deep into this rock, looking into me, both so full of mystery, revealing the truth of my heart.  Mystical and mysterious, question and answer, a cosmos of unfathomable nebulae of many colors, the DNA of the universe imprinted upon every particle that we are.  A body formed, spit out from volcanoes, storm tossed on to many shores, the sun’s light encased in our cells.  In time, I’m as old as this rock.  Outside of time, I’ve no beginning or end.   Amazing, this being-ness without end and what rock can teach you…when you listen.