It started with the Fathers of the Fathers.
Each ache, each man left broken
by the one who came before him:
not his fault,
that pain, continued.
But an unwanted gift, often unseen,
too often delivered.
It must now be seen.
It must now stop,
to break the rusty chain.
My wordpress plan is due to expire.
Very due to expire.
Due to expire in a couple of days, due to expire. And I’m not going to renew it.
I’m attached to this, my sweet little bloggy home. Truly, I am.
I’m attached to all of you, whose faces I see, whose hearts I feel I know, somehow.
But I think this time, it really is time.
Time to reinvent myself, maybe.
Time to be brave and…do something else (you all know I’ve been wobbling about for quite sometime.)
I’ve got my new creativity website which may need some attention at some point. (The link for that one is brookecutlercreative.com. Please head over and subscribe if you’re not already, I’d hate to entirely lose you all. xx)
And, of course I’m intending to continue my novel, and to keep writing at medium and see where that road drifts to.
But I think I’ll let my plan expire, here, and…just see what happens.
I can’t pay for two websites: that’s one thing I do know, and that leads me to thinking this may just be the perfect time to let the wind blow. And sit here. And let it all be.
I’m so very unsure.
But I can be brave enough to let the wind take me.
I can be brave enough to allow uncertain life to meet me here.
In a world of fire, I am the stream.
Peace.
My heart wants nothing more, my soul wants nothing less.
I am tired.
So tired of the saddest story: well meaning fighters, fighting for good, creating the worst kind of bad.
I am tired.
Of the battle.
I do not need you to fight for me,
and they do not need you to fight for them
because those of us who have been broken are the wisest of souls.
We do not need to be saved.
We need peace.
We all need
peace.
War is what we have.
For now.
Is it worth these precious breaths?
This fight,
this blame,
this game?
Is it really so important?
People die
(people who are loved)
and still we take for granted
life.
And we fight,
and we blame
in this game.
It’s just a game,
just a bloody game.
Just
a bloody
game.
I sat beside the river and smiled. It seemed a little funny to me that us humans believe we are the stars of this Earth show and that nature is here for us, rather than with us. What if we are here for nature? I think it’s more likely that we are all just here, to be whoever and whatever we are.
Last night as I sat beside the river, an epiphany that’s been growing within me grew a little more, so I thought I’d share it with you guys, just in case you’re interested.
I’ll start with the trees. Trees begin with a trunk. As they rise (grow) they branch out, one branch at a time. Each branch thickens and solidifies over time, and as it does it gives birth to new branches, which then give birth to new branches and new branches, until finally we reach the climax: the leaf.
Flowers. All begin with a stem which grows and, in time, becomes a beautiful little bud, bursting for change, bursting to open. Petal by petal it reveals itself, until eventually we have a fully open flower. It doesn’t happen over night, the growth process. But perhaps that’s the whole point of all life. The journey.
We know roughly what will come of a growing tree/flower because we’ve seen it so many times before and so the expectation is to look toward the finished product. To wait for it, even. But what if we’d never seen a fully grown flower? What if we’d never seen a fully grown tree? All we would have is each individual moment to watch the flower bloom. The same is true for the tree.
A flower/tree has never experienced itself, or this life, before, so how would it know how to grow but to simply let the process be and to experience whatever may happen along the way?As the flower blooms, as the tree branches out, as the human lives and ages…all there is is the process. Living. Experiencing. That’s all there is. For all of us.
And so it could be said that nature is here to live and experience life as consciously and fully as we humans are. Each flower is here to find out what it is like to be that particular flower in that particular environment, in every moment it lives. Some flowers live to be picked or destroyed. Some live their whole lives to wither and naturally die. The same goes for trees. Some tree branches may be jumped on by a child and broken, leaving the tree injured and in need of renewal and repair. Some will mend on their own. Some will need help. Some, as nature and all things go eventually, will die.
These processes the natural world go through: they are really no different than the processes we go through, as humans. Growth. Challenges. Being loved and cared for. Being abused. Nature goes through it all, right alongside of us, and none of us have any clue what the journey will be until we are in it, living it, being it.
This will likely sound a little (cough: really quite) crazy to those of you who are absolutely not on the nature train, so perhaps I’ll leave you with a little piece of homework, if you’re interested in diving deeper. When you are next outside, go to the nearest tree and hold your hand up beside a leaf (palm facing you). Look at the leaf carefully. Then look at your hand carefully. Look at the leaf and your hand, again.
When you see it, you will smile, I guarantee you that much. And you will know, without any doubt, that you are not at all alone in this universe.
Nor have you ever been.
Each moment is new and beautiful in my eyes.
This heart has been touched
by the wind of change
enough to know that everything begins
but nothing ends.
Not really.
Not really.
And so I sleep in the arms of the one I love,
knowing I am safe,
knowing I am home.
Knowing nothing has ended
or broken.
Knowing that everything goes on
and on
and on.
The cherry sky
was never meant to stay,
however beautiful.
Do you think a caterpillar knows, upon entering her cocoon, that she will soon die to the only form she’s ever known?
Do you think she is afraid of the dark of the wait, or what might find her on the other side of it all?
Do you think she knows she will soon have wings, and that, though she couldn’t fly before, soon she will soar?
Do you think she wonders what the world might look like, from up there?
Some say the caterpillar is ugly, and that the butterfly is truly the most beautiful version of life she can be.
I say she was always beautiful.
I say she’ll simply be a different kind of beautiful when she grows her wings.
Life is a process of being. Some days the butterfly will be still, some days she will burst into the sky, a flutter of speed.
But despite her many faces, she will always be.
Perhaps that’s her most beautiful part.
It’s a strange sort of beautiful, this life.
I’ve followed the breadcrumbs, even the ones I knew would blow up my world. (They blew it up: into a million pieces of possibility. Beautiful possibility, for everyone around me.)
I have been lost. I have been ecstasy.
I have been right when I thought I was wrong, and wrong when I thought I was right.
I have been in love—my goodness, I have been in love—and I have been broken, and I have been dirty, and I have been changed.
This whole life long, I thought I was one thing.
I never have been one thing. I have been a starburst of infinity.
Always.
And now I see her rise, this girl, to this woman inside me— how she soars with the swell of abundant life.
From the ashes, she flies. Out of the haze. At least for today.
There will be new love in this shining place. I’ll see it with my heart, I’ll know it with my soul.
There will be friendship built on truth and depth and eternity.
There will be a roaring spirit, in the place where magic lives.
And there will be you.
Always, there will be you, my friends.
When I felt
the stuck of you,
I knew you needed
to move.
The mud in the air around you
as you tap
tap
tapped away
told the story of a stuck girl.
Getting the job done,
wishing you were anywhere else
but there.
I supposed
you must have spent days,
weeks,
months or years,
longing to flow
like the river you were born to be.
But instead,
you’ve been there.
In a state that outgrew you
long ago.
I wish I could tell you:
it’s okay to move.
brooke-cutler.com 