in her comment on yesterday's post,  Patricia said…."how steadfast you are."   And  when i read those words,  i was full of feeling.  Full of ….what?   Full of i guess Thankfull ness  to be thought of as

Steadfast.

how beauty full is this,  i feel.  Steadfast.  Steadfast.  I don't know what all to think of it yet.

But then, the day rolled along and into its Self and i finished everything with the Dog cloth and rolled it into it's mailing tube.  Taped.  Addressed.  Ready.

and all the while,  i thought about the word    Shame.   I thought about it because there is a very vibrant and vibrating Thread that is wanting attention,  wanting movement and wanting me to See it  and Come with it.   It's very alive.   It has to do with why all of a sudden i had wanted to send this Dog Cloth.  

I have no clue, really,  what's going on.  None.  But i do know that this has come up over and over with this Dog Tay.  Most dogs you can shame.  You can tell them they are a bad dog and they  cast their eyes aside,  their tails droop.  They stand…waiting for some indication that they are forgiven.  Tay does not do this.  and it has been of interest.   Only a few times i have tried to "shame" her by telling her she is a BAD dog.  It doesn't work.  She stands there.  Totally focused on my face,  totally Alert and stares at me.   I "hear" her saying …"What?"   She knows what i'm talking about.  And sometimes she chooses to accomodate me by not doing,  so much,  what i tried to shame her for.  But really,  sometimes she decided to continue.  Many things,  and the really important things, she understands easily and finds reasonable.  Accomodates these things.   Somethings not.  And i watch myself loving her for this.   As she stares into my eyes asking "What?"  i stare back,  until i get over my annoyance and  just,  well,   love her.   Her body softens.  She puts her head on my lap or against my hip.  Done.  and we just go.  So what does this all MEAN?  She doesn't have any sense of being a Bad Dog.  and also, really,  she is not at all impressed by me saying Good Dog.  That rolls of her like rain.  Good Dog/Bad Dog   Doesn't mean a thing.  She's Tay.  She likes Love.  She likes herSelf.  She likes Just Going.   She likes Just Going the most.  

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another passing of this Thread.  This is from Michelle…her holiday card…and so.  I go back.  I go back to Clarissa Pinkola Estes,  Women Who Run With the Wolves,  to Baba Yaga.  I will go back to Baba Yaga's House.  Ok.  so and Ok.

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This is also from Jan.

"from Anam Cara by John O'Donohue.  pg. 94

There are endless stories about ghosts and spirits.  One finds an enthralling weave of stories about the independence and structure of the spirit world.  The human body has come out of this underworld.  Consequently, in your body,  clay is finding a form and shape that it never found before.  Just as it is an immense privilege for your clay to have come up into the light,  it is also a great responsibility.

in your clay body,  things are coming to expression and to light that were never known before, presences that never came to light or shape in any other individual.   You represent an unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice.  Often the joy you feel does not belong to your individual biography but to the clay out of which you are formed.  At other times you will find sorrow moving through you, like a dark mist over a landscape.  The sorrow is dark enough to paralyze you.  It is a mistake to interfere with this movement of feeling.  It is more appropriate to recognize that this emotion belongs more to your clay than to your mind.  It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass;  it is on its way elsewhere.  We so easily forget that our clay has a memory that preceded our minds, a life of its own before it took its present form.  Regardless of how modern we seem,  we still remain ancient sisters and brothers of the one clay.  In each of us a different part of the mystery becomes luminous."

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42 responses to “…………………Steadfast……………………”

  1. Liz Avatar

    Yes, it is a very good, very true word … for this place where I come every day and find you have left light and love and humor and very real things to ponder. Where we can share, without concern for interrupting the flow of your days … where we can return to find a response … this give and take from kindred spirits who all count on you being here … being steadfast.

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  2. grace Avatar

    i want us to count on All of Us being here., for the Give and Take. We are All here. it’s about All of Us being here…so much. me, well i am just one. But All of Us, we are a LOT. and WE are very GRAND,?, yes?, YES. We are Grand.

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  3. Liz Avatar

    We are, yes we are

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  4. grace Avatar

    yes. i walked away from this screen and looked at the fire in the wood stove and thought some about it.
    it’s kind of just WORDS, but if we Feel it, it’s much more. Truly.
    it’s a weaving of Lives. How we go. How we find OurSelves. We
    wander here through this world of typed words on a screen but then we go back and forth into our days as we live them. It’s Magic., really.

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  5. Jan Avatar
    Jan

    how beautiful to have the Tay cloth going to the children. . .without “shame”. . . . .she, and you, are showing them that. . .giving them that sense of their clay, just through the presence of intention. . .the words you wove in at the end. . .carrying the truth. . . . .

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  6. Mo Crow Avatar

    (((Grace))) and (((Tay)))
    wild things
    you make my heart sing
    you make everything groovy!

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  7. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    The Baba Yaga card is the last in a dozen I bought three years ago from Rima Staines at http://intothehermatage.blogspot.com/ She has a new calendar this year too but I’m out of funds…I just LOVE her stuff. She’s very real to me and came originally from Terri Windling who you know. Luminous beings they are, like you, and YES “In each of us a different part of the mystery becomes luminous.”

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  8. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    I’m reading and responding through the haze of a cold and sore throat but to see the names of Clarissa Pinkola Estes and John O’Donohue, well this just illuminates my day. I had given my copy of Anam Cara away several years ago so I was moved to get another copy this year: For a while now, I’ve been re-reading a few pages a night. To continue a bit from pg.94:
    “Essentially we belong beautifully to nature. The body knows this belonging and desires it. It does not exile us either spiritually or emotionally. The human body is at home on the earth. It is probably a splinter in the mind that is the sore root of so much of our exile. This tension between clay and mind is the source of all creativity. It is the tension in us between the ancient and the new, the known and the unknown. Only the imagination is native to this rhythm” ….later on John adds, pg.96,
    “When there is a real awakening in love and friendship, this sense of the clay within can dawn…We never know how many places of nature meet within the human body. Landscape is not all external, some has crept inside the soul. Human presence is infused with landscape.”

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  9. ² Avatar
    ²

    real ideas , real words
    nothing to add on these
    i can feel the landscape in my body
    on some places
    this humanbody of clay greet you
    and recognice some clay of you
    how big is that
    is’n it ? !

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  10. cynthia Avatar
    cynthia

    oh a song, a tune in my head for this day..i will add names freely and smile thinking of you, of grace and company each time i hum…this will make my husband smile and the easy joy of such things will multiply..

    Like

  11. patriciaspangler47@gmail.com Avatar

    oh Grace. if something–anything–i say fills you with thankful ness–well then you can know the sustenance i experience with every visit to windthread. and today was no exception. yesterday a friend? an acquaintance really–visited for several long hours–and when she left i felt so–what is the word?–so utterly bereft and overcome with difficult feelings that were impossible to understand. out of the blue a pall had settled on me. i wanted to write it off to comments made. to the energy being toxic. to something–anything–that would help me understand what in the world had happened in such a short time frame. but nothing came to mind except one thing–that i would just have to be with the feelings until they passed. be with. not resist. and that was the very hard part, because there is a part of me that wants to change things when they are uncomfortable. so i didn’t try to change anything. simply acknowledged it all and tried not to squirm too much.
    and then i read the passage from Anam Cara and it shed SO MUCH light on these mysterious funk clouds that seem sometimes more like swamp gas–arising from out of the blue, literally. and as i read–oooo if you could know the appreciation i felt. for this passage from O’donohue. for you for passing it on and for Jan for bringing this wisdom to windthread.
    and i’ll simply add–this is all so really REAL

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  12. patriciaspangler47@gmail.com Avatar

    even in your “haze of cold and sore throat” you bring forth great clarity and light. hope you’re feeling better this morning.

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  13. Liz Avatar

    Be well soon …

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  14. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    Thank you Liz and Patricia, hot tea with a bit of Irish whiskey is doing the trick this morning.

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  15. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    AND grace I wanted to say that the cloth Tay, all wrapped and in a mailing tube, ready to go to Wendy’s children is such a fitting and uplifting way to end this week of 2014…

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  16. beth Avatar

    Basking in all these words and thoughts this morning.

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  17. jude Avatar

    Nice for you to send another cloth to Wendy’s kids

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  18. Saskia Van Herwaarden Avatar

    ha, Irish whiskey….hope you’re feeling even better by the time you read this;-)

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  19. Saskia Van Herwaarden Avatar

    dogs can really teach us a thing or two ’bout patience and behaving oneself, at least mine can, and Do! Seems Tay has the same ability. how wonderful he’s sort of on his way to those children in need

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  20. Yvette Avatar

    Tay is as clay
    Wendy will be over the moon for her kids

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  21. Tina Avatar
    Tina

    Grace ….just WORDS…no way!!!! As I just am now finding myself time and space to grow into my own I find the most amazing group of women. It is magic…..a magical journey. Thank you for being a becon of light…just WORDS…no way!!!

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  22. LAB Avatar
    LAB

    Tay is a most wonderful being, not like another, not like what we humans understand. She is who she is and that is Good. Patience…

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  23. grace Avatar

    O!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! O!
    LAB!!!!!!!!!!!
    Oh, and HEY!
    Why do you only come Sometimes? but then, really, it’s good, that you only come sometimes because you Startle me with your presense

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  24. Dana Avatar

    Your comments about Tay and shame really hit home to me and I have been coming back and coming back, wondering if I should respond….
    As soon as I read it I thought of the one dog I actually chose, and how, when as a tiny puppy I saw that she could be shamed I knew she was the one for us. I would not have taken her if she had behaved like Tay. I wanted a dog that I could control and influence. I did not realize then that shame was how I was controlled and influenced. I absorbed that method so thoroughly that I didn’t see it anymore. I have been working to slough off the shame I have accumulated all my life, but every now and then something like your post shows it to me again. I’d like to think that now I could handle a dog like Tay….let go of control and allow her to be her without shame, but I’m not sure. What a teacher she is. Your cloth so captures her essence, which is a perfect one to share with the children.

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  25. grace Avatar

    it is, isn’t it.

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  26. grace Avatar

    i am kind of amazed by Everything in the moment

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  27. grace Avatar
  28. grace Avatar

    ilove that it will make him smile and things will multiply

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  29. grace Avatar

    we are all critical to the Luminosity

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  30. grace Avatar

    this is extremely Beauty Full…to be infused
    thank you, Marti for these continuing words

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  31. grace Avatar

    Yes, Maria. Clay to Clay

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  32. grace Avatar

    it’s New Year’s Eve and i am sitting with things. Just
    gently sitting with them

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  33. grace Avatar

    it came as a surprise to me. The needing to send this Cloth
    that i had imagined would stay here

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  34. grace Avatar

    not easy basking….

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  35. grace Avatar

    yes. it’s been a while. But this one wanted to Go

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  36. grace Avatar

    i really wish i could take Her…in person,…in dogness. How
    she would BE with the children…it would be amazing to see

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  37. grace Avatar

    yes. Ta y is clay.
    we will see what the children SEE. There is no way to know.

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  38. grace Avatar

    Tina…i am Glad that you are Here. Stay.

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  39. grace Avatar

    yes. She is not Easy. She Challenges everything. She is so
    FULL of LIVING in a real and spontaneous way. We all are used
    to using shame with dogs. They ordinarily so easily are shamed.
    I’ve done it. It gets things done. Gets things under control.
    Learning from her is a whole different thing and i learn not about
    Dogs, but about my Self. I LOVE her.

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  40. jan millington Avatar
    jan millington

    This was a wonderful read. I am infused, and uplifted. Thank you for sharing, all of you. X

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  41. grace Avatar

    Yes. ALL OF US. yes. it’s what it takes. ALL OF US.

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