the roar

my daughter and i get out and walk nearly every day. something about the right brainedness of walking, julia cameron calls walking a means to prosody. something about it opens your heart. it certainly does mine.

if you've never seen excalibur, the great arthur flick from some time ago, there is the scene, i believe it is after gawain has brought the chalice to arthur and he rides to carmina burrana and blossoms are strewn from the trees. i love that scene.

that is how it is here. the blossoms pouring from the trees in the gentle breezes, the bees lighting from flower to flower. renee informed me yesterday that she wanted "these blossoms" strewn at her wedding instead of rose petals. i believe she means cherry blossoms, but i've yet to identify the tree with certainty. how young an age to be thinking of a wedding. but she is a girl after all.

so we are walking by this stream and there was some lush green vegitation springing forth. i pointed it out to renee because it was so abundant amidst the yet to return to fullness bushes surrounding it. renee says,

it's saying, hello world. this is me. and i'm blooming!

i wish you could just see her sweet little legs pumping the bicycle pedals as her hair blows in the wind. yesterday she had on my pink leopard back pack with a red teddy bear i sewed for her looking back at me. she rides off in much joy.

i think she just redefined my year. the peculiar gift of children is the way they can make such profound statements in utter innocence. they can speak the truth of God and not bat an eye, because it is just them speaking their hearts.

i realize i spend a lot of time in lamentation. i am looking to change that. but not artificially. i'm not looking to get out of the doldrums just because i'm sick of being there. i genuinely want to rejoice. as easily as i lament. i want the joy to flow from the depths of me, just as the grief has.

my rabbi wrote to me after yesterday's post, and said this, i use it now without his permission but with his blessing i'm sure:

Texas certainly lacks without you and yours
And New York does not yet know what it has
But only the young lions do lack
And yours is a powerful roar

i spent the entire day thinking of these words. the roar. when i was given a tribal name by some apaches, i wanted my name to be lion heart woman. they thought it too aborigonal (though they forgot california has mountain lions), and named me bear heart woman.

i have always felt lion heart woman to be my true name. so this roar business really touched me. and here is what i came up with:

it is a great
friend indeed
who can
hear the roar
of a lion
sounding
from the
silently
trembling
lamb.

i've been so utterly downtrodden, yet those who know me hear beyond the grief and pain. those who listen can hear something stirring up a roar. and it is time for me to roar and to bloom. both of those. the season of death is over. time to move forward to pentecost and the infilling. huzzah. what better way to do it than with blossoms streaming from the trees. i may even play some carmina burrana (they do let us drink from the chalice every eucharist service, which i find very cool).