IMAGINING the many paths we could pursue in life helps us get up each morning and face the world. But there's sweeter satisfaction in finding the power to follow through.
In the country, firsts come year after year---all memorable and most heartwarming. Imagine your first bite-sized potato from a garden you planted yourself. Imagine waving your arms frantically at a failed attempt to round up an escaped sheep. Imagine a scar-covered farmer who tells you stories from his childhood as if they were only yesterday. Imagine the tiniest breeze as a baby wren attempts its first flight inches from your ear to the calling of its mom--going nowhere fast, but determined to make the journey. Imagine a place where an owl screeching in the tree next to your window at night is, quite literally, an eye opener. Imagine a place where the world really does stand still for moments at a time. So I did......................................................................................
I've imagined this little farm since childhood. It's always been my dream, to be surrounded by animals. In my estimation, it is in the presence of animals that we develop a higher sense of ourselves and the world in which we all participate. Animals teach us much, if we would only listen and observe........ I pass through the seasons of a year in step with my flocks cycle. Breeding turns to lambing and shearing turns to grazing and so on. I credit my life to my animals for teaching me that we all fit together, that we all hold a place and purpose in the world.
Imagine a productive garden full of food.........Sometimes I think to myself that maybe, just maybe, a person's time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food.
I pass through these seasons with the cycles of my sheep, the cycles of the garden, the cycles of a country year.... It's hard work, it takes a patient hand, and being satisfied when everything is taken care of at the end of the day, even if it isn't perfect.
Imagine a place.......where your most far-fetched ideas come to play...
A poem by Pat Lynn Reilly:
Imagine a Woman
Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman.
A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.
Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.
Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.
A woman who listens
to her needs and desires.
Who meets them with tenderness and grace.
Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past's influence on the present.
A woman who has walked through her past.
Who has healed into the present.
Imagine a woman who authors her own life.
A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf.
Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.
Imagine a woman who names her own gods.
A woman who imagines the divine
in her image and likeness.
Who designs a personal spirituality
to inform her daily life.
Imagine a woman in love
with her own body.
A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.
Who celebrates its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.
Imagine a woman who honors the body
of the Goddess in her changing body.
A woman who celebrates the accumulation
of her years and her wisdom.
Who refuses to use her life-energy
disguising the changes in her body and life.
Imagine a woman who values
the women in her life.
A woman who sits in circles of women.
Who is reminded of the truth
about herself when she forgets.
Imagine yourself as this woman.
