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20190324_105842

the Live Oak on this Hill.  Many.  and many have multiple trunks.  this one is in the old Doe Goat Forest…in this pic you see 5.  There's actually 6.  I don't know anything about how this occurs.  So far,  i find no information.  But it IS.  and i will continue to look.  I want to find some universal object that i can use to be able to show the size of these trees.  I've never seen anything like them before.  An average lifespan is 200 years.

 


20190324_105851

looking up.

I feel extremely grateful and also amazed that i get to live this last part of my life here.  Who would've guessed.  Coming from a childhood in the midwest on a creek.  Spending my middle years in a desert world.  then,  coming here.  

What am i trying to talk about now?   how to talk about it.  It may be off putting.  So be it.  Hopefully i'll find words that will tell the truth of what i am experiencing.  How the Now of my life is so rooted in that childhood at the Michigan creek.  How there has been a pulse,  a thread that held over all the years..

Nature.  We talk about Nature.  it's a word that's like sky.   How we talk about sky….that blue stuff overhead,  but sky is so much.  Sky is the Whole of what holds this Planet,  sky is deep,  heavy,  strong science.  And deep heavy strong Sacred.  Science and Sacred being Same.  "nature",  Same.

I want to learn how to talk about the beingness of things.  Or i don't want to continue here at all.  

Each person who comes here can take or leave any of it,  it doesn't matter to me at all.  What matters is if i keep telling the story of how i experience life in my most genuine way,  out of the Felt Sense of All of It.  

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23 responses to “beings”

  1. Mo Crow Avatar
    Mo Crow

    love how you listen to the spirits of place (((Grace)))

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  2. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    there is nothing more important to do

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  3. Tina Avatar
    Tina

    Your spirit moves me Grace ., I love that you have found your Happy Place. One of my greatest treasures is a heart shaped stone that a dear friend found walking along Lake Michigan in Door County .. she has been gone a long time now. I loved her very much.

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  4. Marti Avatar
    Marti

    I will always come here to see and read your words about your sacred ordinaries, the blessings and knowledge that you receive as you explore your Hill because for me, this is where spirit resides. It is when I walk the land here where I live that I feel most blessed so the idea that you share what you sense from your land is a gift that I want to receive.
    Today I thought of you as our temps rose to 78 and I heard scratching under our juniper tams; thought to myself well the lizards are back but then it is still March, too early but sure enough, one skedaddled across the walkway and I smiled. I smiled because of the constancy of the seasons, of what returns year after year; of how when the world is just too damn much with me, I step outside, sit still, exhale and quietly become centered, calmed and then rise to walk, to crouch and notice seeds sprouting, weeds popping up in their unique beauty, rocks seeming to multiply over night because we have a lot of rocks in the dirt trails behind our home, and I notice how the sandy soil feels under my feet and how each puff of dirt as I take a step has a scent that speaks to me of rawness and realness. The land brings awareness as well as gratitude for as I walk and forage for dye materials, sometimes, a vision comes that shapes itself into one of my landscape cloth collages as I am gathering materials, softly echoing the outer landscape before me with the inner landscape of my thoughts, a melding of the two.
    Barry Lopez has some words about this in Crossing Open Ground: He writes,
    “I believe, we are deeply influenced by where on this earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature- the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city, where wind, the chirp of birds, the line of a falling leaf, are known. These thoughts are arranged, further, according to the thread of one’s moral, intellectual, and spiritual development. The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes.
    Among the Navajo, the land is thought to exhibit sacred order…each individual undertakes to order his interior landscape according to the exterior landscape. To succeed in this means to achieve a balanced state of mental health.”

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  5. Peggy Mc G Avatar
    Peggy Mc G

    Love your words Grace-and all you think about.. you touch so many people.. and love all the comments. I feel the same, but could never express in writing the way you all can. That in itself is such a talent.

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  6. Peggy Mc G Avatar
    Peggy Mc G

    Oh how beautiful.. your last paragraph..

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  7. Kim Avatar
    Kim

    I love hearing the story of how you experience life in your most genuine way. It takes a lifetime to find your own true self. But once you get there, you recognize her as someone you’ve known all along. The difference is now you are brave enough to share without needing it to matter to anyone else. Take it or leave it. It only matters that you are true to your genuine self.

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  8. Michelle Slater Avatar
    Michelle Slater

    Speechless but not entirely without sincere response – This seven minutes says close to what I would say to you if I could find the words:
    The Universe in Verse: Marie Howe reads Singularity (after Stephen Hawking) from Maria Popova on Vimeo.

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  9. Michelle Slater Avatar
    Michelle Slater

    just me replying to me with the link:
    https://vimeo.com/271161318

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  10. debbie.weaver Avatar
    debbie.weaver

    Moving words, Grace. We often talk about Nature as if it is something apart from us that we can go and visit at the weekend. We of course are part of it of this natural world and the beingness of being part of it should be so important to us especially in this time.
    I believe in a natural force, a collective unconscious that we have lost touch with and don’t know how to tap into any more, except for some of the indigenous people. We need to find our part in the natural world that surrounds us and them maybe we wouldn’t spend so much time destroying what is part of us and that in that process we are destroying ourselves as well.

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  11. Beth Avatar
    Beth

    It’s important work Grace. You know I feel that in my bones. And in your photo of the tree tops… crown shyness! I was so fascinated by this phenomenon when I first heard of it. I don’t see it in my woods here, we must not have the right kind of trees. But there it is in your photo! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_shyness

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  12. ² Avatar
    ²

    thank you Beth/Grace i have read it on wikipedia , have never take attention of it before , or heard about it before ;

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  13. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    stones hold things forever i think. yeah. i think this is
    true. Your friend….

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  14. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    “each individual undertakes to order his interior landscape according to the exterior” yes. so much yes…to come into harmony.
    your words…they are so how it can be. No matter the Place on this planet we find ourselves, under each foot is Earth with all it’s evolution, past and ongoing. how this enriches our days enough to Hold us in these times…times that we must Live to the Best of our ability

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  15. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    you express things very well. What you say feeds me.

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  16. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    i have to be. Not to is toxic.

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  17. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    you are such a GIFt, michelle, what you are so able to find and share…
    this link…what it meant to me, to listen, to hear that it spoke the same as this stone from the dirt here, i cannot say how validating that is, how much strength it gives to the Going, the telling, the being

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  18. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    i am heartened. am finding here and there, people
    who speak of these things. There is nothing to do but
    continue to HOLD to the love of Earth, the love of Life

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  19. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    this is so GREAT!…never heard of this, but YES…
    there it IS…just overhead!!!!!! and these Oaks…
    so exemplary….I went out today, and YES, everywhere
    this is so
    THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    How Brilliant It IS! How so absolutely Brilliant

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  20. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    yes, Maria…i so LOVE that so much is offered here…
    We find these things and tell eachother….just love….

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  21. Laura R Avatar
    Laura R

    What a powerful post, Grace. You find beauty in everything. I do love your looking up photo.
    xo
    Laura

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  22. grace Forrest Avatar
    grace Forrest

    Laura…do you have these Oaks where you are?

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  23. dee Avatar
    dee

    “Sky is the Whole of what holds this Planet, sky is deep, heavy, strong science. And deep heavy strong Sacred. Science and Sacred being Same. “nature”, Same.
    I want to learn how to talk about the beingness of things.”
    It strikes me that you already know how to talk about beingness of things. You know how to make them come alive. Honor them. Find your pulsing thread among the natural world. I am curious about the aliveness of the past. Do you think this is a function of this place? Of age? Or something else?

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