I participated in a guided meditation session with a group of women. We sat in a circle, listening to music. We had our arms relaxed and our index fingers pointing up, in invitation for a connection with deity. My previous experiences with meditation had left me feeling like I was doing it all wrong: I could never sync my breathing with the guide, and trying to think of nothing felt stressful, not relaxing! This time I decided I didn’t have to follow the directions if I didn’t want to, and I opened myself up to wherever the experience took me. Some images rose to the surface of my mind, and I explored the shape of them.

With my index fingers pointed up, I envisioned the divine feminine reaching down as pea tendrils, curling around each finger. I very much wanted her to pull me up, to fly me around magically like at the end of a Miazaki film. I wanted to fly to her rounded leaves and be cradled in them, swaddled with her love. But her pulling me up would require a painful tug that would pop my arm sockets, so that wasn’t quite the right image.

Then I imagined her coming down to my level. It felt suffocating to have vines and leaves all around me. I couldn’t see anything else, and I couldn’t grow. Besides, plants grow up, not down. So that wasn’t right either.

Then I imagined branches of the pea shoots growing sideways, with tendrils wrapped around the fingers of each person in the circle. We were bound together, collectively bundled into a new creation. That felt right. And beautiful. And unifying. I liked how we were each supports for those curling pea tendrils and I liked how she wrapped herself around us right where we were.

I felt that the pea tendrils weren’t just reaching for my finger, but that they wanted to hold my hand. I felt that God wanted to sit with me right where I was, not to pull me up or push me down, but to simply be with me in that moment. I opened my hands and pictured sitting there with Her, holding hands and feeling loved.

***

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

~from Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”

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Near the river, a pair of Canada geese returned to their nest at the top of a ten foot tall stump. I sat, watching the mother goose incubating her eggs. She sat, just being there for her children. They couldn’t see her. They may not comprehend her life-giving presence. She cannot join them, and she cannot rush their readiness to join her. Her stillness is not laziness. Her inactivity is purposeful work. In not-doing she is productive.

***

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.

~from Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day”

***

At the science festival my five-year-old made a necklace out of a tiny Ziploc bag threaded onto a length of yarn. She put a bean and a damp cotton ball inside. She watered her bean daily and proudly wore her necklace to kindergarten. Day by day we both marveled, observing the usually-hidden miracle of germination. I wrote:

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they are this notable thing,
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

~from Mary Oliver’s “Starlings in Winter”

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This post is part of a series, Contemplating Heavenly Mother. Find more from this series here.