spiraling inward ꩜ spiraling outward, re-membering that wild child, desert here i am
Tracing my still icy fingers through the chilled dust, not yet warmed by the sun, I am creating a labyrinth. Today is my 30th birthday, and I find myself here in this vast desert landscape reflecting on the spiraling way to this place and those who have journeyed with me along the way.
Like the movement of this womb-like path I have traced here in the dust, I know my journey has led me to the inner folds of Earth’s embrace and back out to embody that oneness with a transformed vision of the sacred wilderness around me. My journey into the wild began when Mother Earth’s gravitational pull lured me to stay firmly rooted in Her.
It continued in my early years as Mom would instill in me a child-like approach to creatures, a sense awe at grand landscapes, and a love for all smells, even ones often avoided. It is through smell I feel the most connected to the one fragrant breath that pervades the cosmos. And as Dad would teach me curiosity and a way to hear all Beings by picking up rocks saying, “This rock spoke to me,” this twig, this river, this tree. Beings from whom I now perceive wisdom.
My journey found courage as a six-year-old standing barefoot in a long t-shirt with disheveled hair at the edge of my backyard, waving protest signs at mowers that were taming the wilderness (an overgrown commercial lot). Often barefoot, brambly, browned from mud, kissing toads, climbing trees, and dancing with bees, I was a little wild child wandering wilderness roads.
The wilderness way that my wild childhood gave me the courage to pursue has led me to the desert, called to serve as minister to youth and the environment bringing out each one’s wild child while instilling a sense of awe of our desert surroundings.
Standing here in the desert with dust on my fingertips, I wonder if year 30 is really a new beginning, a movement out from or back into the center of this womb-like labyrinth life. I am here in the desert, a place of genesis for many of the world’s spiritual and religious traditions. I wonder what genesis awaits me.
Womb of Life, i remember
Womb of Life
Who from the deep
births forth all newness
help me trace my way back to You
and as i do
i remember and give thanks
to all those
who have been with me
along the way
