Keeping and Kept

Northern Flickers visit my dreams while it rains instead of snows. January allows a taste of spring months and I am not ungrateful. I have beclouded myself but that is ending.

In a very hard lesson, egocentricity masks as humility. Empathy parades as projection.

When trees on the land were cut down, my grief partly arose from projecting humanity onto and into the trees. Instead, I consider the recognition of the plant-ness of the trees in me as opposed to my human-ness in the plants.

Are dreams simply reflections of old learning patterns? In the Flicker Dream, I am my sibling's keeper, and I also happen to be kept. The god of trees says the minutiae is all cared for. It is time to see what abides in the vanishing. Now I know: to care for an other's soul is to care for one's own. Someone did this for me when I didn't deserve it. May I now reflect the Love it took to see it as so.

The neighbor's circular saw whines at an excruciating pitch as it cuts through siding. The recycling truck's brakes screech at every stop. Less trees means less barrier between man's clutter and clank. At least there is more light and room now for wildflowers and herb gardens.

The ice melts off the lake and I am left to swim and learn in a sea of opposites. It's working.