Living Dream-Wise - photo by JaneUntil three weeks ago, we thought we would be living in San Mateo, California by now. Now we find ourselves firmly rooted on Vashon, with the intention of staying here for good (universe willing!). I write that, but I also know that anything might happen at anytime -- all we or anyone can do is "follow the signs", and proceed the best we can with what we see before us.
A week ago I browsed a shelf in Bookshop Santa Cruz, in California, and came upon a book entitled The Art Of The Possible. I have no idea what the book is about, but at the time I thought to myself "There's a book I don't need to read. We know all about living the Art Of The Possible." At the time, we had no idea where we would end up living, but had several possibilities, all very different from one another, but each of which would be ... fine. It was rather dizzying for me at times! All we could do was step forward the best we could with some sort of plan for the possible, and wait for a GO signal from God. We got one, finally. It turned out that the expensive but bearable costs of fixing up our house to sell, had turned into a revelation of extensive failure throughout the entire structure of the house. The house had not been constructed with materials intended to last, and to attempt to bring the house into structural soundness was going to involve a huge price tag.
At that point we realized that we could actually take down the house, reuse the materials that were sound (like the double-paned windows we'd installed over the ten years we'd lived here), and build the smaller earthship-inspired sensibly constructed sustainable home that we'd been dreaming of these past few years. In short, we had what amounted to us as a written invitation from God to realize this dream in a place that has been otherwise a dream to live in for ten years.
Returning to our island home, realizing that we were choosing to live here for good, I felt a huge sense of gratitude for the forest, farm, and field -- the natural world that is right here. I realized just how deeply this ecology has become myself. How much each of these plants, trees, animals are my allies, and that our relationship will only deepen in the coming years, decades, as we root soundly into this good earth, this place we now truly call home.
The dreams I've carried for "wise village", fully-woven community, a rewoven culture, a deepening into the heart of our nature as part of nature, of knowing myself and my family and my people as members of a more-than-human community is all available right here, is already something that I live and know at the root of my soul. It is a place that welcomes me, my family as we truly are, just as ourselves, and invites us to grow more deeply into our unique natures, our unique expressions of being in the world at this time in the dream of the earth. I knew this to be true, but for numerous reasons we had to walk a labyrinth path to our beginnings, to the foundation of our beings, and discover that it all needed to be reconstructed from the ground up, to more fully reflect the light of our hearts, who we've become after ten years in this, for us, blessing place. I for one had to learn how to say good by to some old dreams, and, in the process, to discover them to be completely rewoven--and so much easier to live, because I'm living them already--right here, on our home ground.
It's wild to live dream-wise: it takes courage to follow your heart into shadowed territory, into the heart of the green, even when it looks like you're heading into a place without soul, to give yourself to a path because that's all you can see before you, and you have no other information to guide you differently. You go forward step after step, and then that one thing you need to know appears, and you know exactly what to do. It's never what you expect.
That's how it is to live dream-wise -- you just do the best you can with what you know to be true for you, and know that there is far more going on than what you perceive. And you trust: in your instincts and ability to take action when the time ripens, and to correct your course as new understandings are revealed, and in the strength and honesty of your own compassionate heart. Even more, you place your faith in the generous, surprising nature of the Mystery that wraps around us, through us, beyond us, is us, and -- is both not and so very, very much more.
Graces,
Jane
