Thursday Thealogy: Woodswisdom

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” ― Carl Jung

“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~Joan Borysenko

“Let silence take you to the core of life.” ― Rumi

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.” ― Thomas Merton

“The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.” –Theodore Rubin

I had grand plans to share a whole bunch of fabulously insightful thoughts today based on a fabulously insightful post about Objectivity over at the Allergic Pagan, but this week is the busiest and most difficult week of the (college) session for me. I actually feel like I may have shortened my lifespan by staying up too late and working too hard. I usually maintain a pretty good work-life integration (I don’t say balance here intentionally, because it is hard for me to see work and life as two separate things that have to be “balanced.” I want them to integrate into a seamless flow that is just…life and living). However, the end of session grading tips me over the edge from doing good most of the time to edge of total freak out. Luckily, I’m finally catching on that this is normal and it is brief, it isn’t going to last forever and it doesn’t mean that I have to go on a big quit-fest or sink into a pit of despair about my “inability” to handle it all. So, today I slipped out to the woods and I laid on the rock and looked at the blue sky and listened to the birds and I thought, my gift to myself is not to expect anything else out of me today. I’m just going to lie here for a bit and look and rest. No thealogical insights required after all, who cares what I already named my post. I noticed the temperature is lovely, there were all kinds of birds out and about singing and flying and rooting through the dry leaves. I reflected on how beautiful I think it is that when I lie down on my back and look up at the sky, the trees there make an awesomely perfect circle.  I took one picture over my head and behind me…

And one in front of me, and I noticed how the angle of the sun made it look like two completely different days, rather than just a different angle on the same day:

I remembered my most fundamental and core thealogical insight from my Ecology and the Sacred class:

I really do feel like the relational context of our lives is the fundamental core of the human experience. We cannot not be in relationship to the things around us, not just in terms of other humans, but plants, trees and animals. We are even in relationship with the sun, the wind, and the rain. And, the net that holds the whole, is what I name as divinity.

And, earlier in the week I noticed this poem and saved it to share:

How I go to the woods

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.
~ Mary Oliver

via ♥ Journey Of Young Women:

And, I saved this fabulous saying:

Via Naturalistic Pantheist

In the spirit of keeping it real and balancing (integrating?) the spirit with the bite, this afternoon I found a large bunch of entrails on my front porch. They were so copious that I actually feared for a moment that something had killed one of our cats. As I laid there on the rocks, breathing, thinking, feeling calm, feeling rested, letting some thealogy roam around my brain, doing a little musing about “sacrificial stones” and wondering if there was any poetry in me about that, and mentally re-giving myself permission to rest, our little dog trotted down and put his face right over mine and I jumped up screaming, “ENTRAIL MOUTH!” and ran back to the house…