When Dormancy Wakes You Up

June 10, 2015June 10, 2015 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

Orchids woo me with their elegance. If they spoke, opened up their petals as lips and breathed words, their cadence would roll off their tongues with eloquence. In their presence, I am drunk on beauty. I study the lines of their face. Trace with my eyes the silhouette of their tender, tall strength.

I marvel and stare. Feel drawn in by their fragile soil-birthed beauty. All my senses feel alive when I am in their presence. Every stem, petal, bulb, and leaf bear something of natural wonder.

And then they leave me. Go dormant. And I struggle to care for them. I cannot seem to meet their needs. Tend to them in the proper way. They are the Rubik’s cube of my world. And then, as with many things circling around my soul places these days, I hear what I could not hear before. I really listen. I listen to things I did not formerly hear. I know. And I am renewed by their lessons.

All around my yard, in the garden, in my home, in my art, things are being born. I hold a vigil of uncertainty. I cannot seem to fall into their rhythm. I am an impatient observer and an anxious excavator of beauty. I believe that I am on guard and alert. I believe that I am eyes-wide open and prepared to receive. I am the citadel guarding the places of new birth. Caretaker of the ordinary and of my art.

But I have not allowed for the full mystery of surprise in all the ordinary and extraordinary things. I have not factored in the unknown. The goings on under the soil. The backstage preparations behind the veil. I am not leaning into the marvelous perfection of the timing of the Spirit of God.

And trust is thrust into the light. Once again.

I feel as though I am doing my part. With my art. Wrapping my soul in words. Preparing the phases and stages of my poetry and prose to fling them out of the nest. Into the spine of a book. Out of one cradle into another. Into the places that hunger for words of hope and faith.

But this a dormant time. Ripening and waiting are part of the care package. Waiting and trusting the unseen things is faith. Breathing out while breathing in and knowing the next breath will come and with it new mercy. That is my designated role. Trusting while breathing.

Living with hopeful expectancy.

The orchid that I held onto for a long forever will bloom a second time. The one that I almost walked to the trash can and tossed. The first one of my orchids to bloom again holds signs of beauty a second time.

The bloom is tightly held. It is wrapped and protected. It is just as it should be. Dormant and alive.

I trust my poetry and prose are held in this same place. Of tender waiting. And I trust the cradle will rock and toss a bit, yet, protect my art in every stage before the release.

The spines of a book, they may or may not be out there. But I am waiting and watching. Expecting with renewed hope and wonder. Because my orchid will bloom again.

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Joining beautiful writer friend and blogger Kelly Chripczuk over at A Field Of Wild Flowers

There Is A Place

June 1, 2015June 1, 2015 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

There Is A Place

When I grow up I want to be
Queen on her throne
Reigning over the land of just be
Dipping toes in Crayola blue
Birthed in a crayon in 1903
My subjects and me, merry and mindful as awake as can be
Living and thriving in the place where we can all just

Discover the joy of the ruby red hummingbird’s throat

and the brittle loud harmony of a drove of Cicada

perched in a tree, serenading Narnia my she billy goat

(Now I can breathe)

The verb is quite over-used and frightfully misunderstood
But when I grow up
I will let you be
Alone
And yet not
For you will be alone with me
Whispering grateful hymns of praise
In the land of “There Is A Place”
Rooted, established in
Astonishing un -extraordinary

ordinary

Grace

Subjects and a queen, you can be

queen bee

we shall have scones and tea

precisely at three

and listen to the garden grow grace

oh how happy and peace-filled our kingdom shall be

in this land of “There Is A Place”

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Joining Laura

Finding Joy In Your Own Backyard

May 29, 2015May 29, 2015 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

If you have been reading here for any length of time you know my fixation with the word and, as well as the logogram the ampersand. I believe there is always more. And the more I consider why I love and, the more the nuances of the word bubble up. And meet me in the understanding of why. And is a connector. And I am connected to my world via people. (This week alone, I have had rich encounters with friends and writers. Writers and friends.) And via this space I call home.

I can stay and go. Travel and remain. Fly and remain grounded. Be still and know. That what is right here is rich and full of promise. That the soil is dark and full of gifts, right below my pink toes and my bare feet.

I love the idea, both figuratively and literally, of finding joy close to home. Of curating a life from which we don’t need to take a vacation. Of being increasingly at peace in the little space within our arm’s reach. Settling in and extracting peace in the place we call home. I cannot count my spaces. Not here and now. There have been many. My passion for renovating and decorating and for change has carried me, along with my husband and children, on a journey of transforming spaces into homes. The rewards have been grand. The homes have provided us with an anchor for living and loving.

My closest confidante knows my old wrestlings. And my new ones. She knows my achilles heel. And my wounds, my scars and my heart cries. God knows them well too. The older version of me longed to travel. And I got up and went. But now, my life is stationary. But not stagnant.

It if rife with discovery. Teeming with beauty and delight. But it is a journey of staying within a wonderful radius. One tightly drawn close to home.

I have been many places in my life. I travel in place to recall. I reach back in my diaries, my remembering places, my trunk of letters and memories and into the faded photographs which tell stories of Paris and New York. I revisit. Reach back. And go to the place again. Of the countryside of France where I was a nanny for a small sliver of time. To Athens and Alaska. To St. Andrews and Florence. To Lake Cuomo and Tuscany.

There is reward in the revisiting. Memory feeds my dimming desire to go to a place which is not here.

But when I see the Magnolia blossom the size of my head, on the tree beside my home and across the street and by the Deerhead Tree, I have unearthed treasures in the nearby. When I step through my neighborhood, padding around, I see marvelous wonder in the warm eggs from my neighbor’s hens. A trip to my garden, early in the morning, as my rooster crows, is my own living breathing “Alice in Wonderland”.

And it is all I need. To live out this circuitous journey of discovering joy in my own backyard. I am far from here. I am in a land of unwrapping the spaces under me. Below me, beside me and around me. Be Still and Know.

There is so much more here and there than I first believed.

Waxing In The Waning

May 27, 2015May 27, 2015 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

I have not sought the moon this Spring. Intentionally looked up and made mental notes of its stage and size. Cycle and rhythms. Dimness and brightness. Color and stage. But I should be. Marking and noting. There are lessons there for me in the heavenlies.

Rather I have been looking down and to the side. Over and under the small spaces. Seeking the growing. Cataloguing the seed, the bloom and the fruits of the earth and of the the sea. Miniscule milestones in the garden and broken pieces of shells coughed up by the sea. Roughed up and beaten up and then honed into the beautiful.

Waxing in the waning is a banner over my life. Growing in the dimming. Increasing in the lessening. Smallness is wearing her beautiful crown. She is royalty and majesty. The paradox is grand. The center is a whisper, faintly wooing with her call to pause in the now.

I live on the cusp of exploration. Steps from the salty marsh where so much mystery hides in the folds. The waves weave a hiding place. The tides will unveil, pulling the curtain back for peaks. But stand guard, awake and present. Or you will miss much in the changing of the guard.

The dolphin break through the glass ceiling that is the glassy sea. Looking at us as we strain to study their graceful acrobatics. A day is labeled wonderful if we have spent time with a pod. Or even a mother and her young. We are students of the sea. Since I was a child, I have been near in my soul or body or both to the place of salty mystery. Everything is new. Again and again. I remain a child at the seeking of pieces of joy hidden, then revealed. Revealed and then hidden.

Before I even touch the snow pea to my lips I have savored goodness with my eyes. This is just the crescent. But the crescent is enough. The moon in all her fullness. The pea at her ripest, cooked or raw, eaten or not. Archiving the now, fully alive, fully awake fills us with His goodness. Seeing the holy moments. The holy in the moment. Touching and smelling. Seeing and tasting all that He has created brings us closer to the Creator. And that is where abundance is poured out. Every blade and seed, He made. Every dolphin nose. Wet and sleek.

There is a waning to my years. I do not recall the glory-filled details of much of my living from long ago. I come from Dementia. My mother, my grandmother and my aunt have known it too well. And I may be traveling toward Dementia. I may well be in the line of that fiery disease.

But I am going down fighting for a magnificent, magnified view of the poetic now.

And there is a moon and there will always be a moon. And she will meet me in the heavens tonight. This I know.

For now.

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