naked in the wildflowers

on belonging

It is in nature, always nature, that I find my own belonging.  I’ll speak truth: a life frequently housebound is a lonely one.  Starved for human connection, it’s into my garden that I go when I want to feel and to know that I belong.  I lie down amid the grass and the creeping buttercup of my small lawn and centre myself and my spirit.  I am here.

This narrow, overflowing patch of ground has held me in a way like no other.  I am glad of my family; I am glad of my friends.  But in the long cocoon of illness, my primary relationship is twofold and it is many. 

My husband and the Earth beneath us.  The two. 

And every root, every stem, every leaf; of sheltering maple and tender rose, of unravelling fern and spilling sweet woodruff.  Every visiting robin with curious eye.  Every strange bug that crawls on my waiting skin.  The stone in my palm holding the weight of the world.  The many.

I belong to it all.

*

I lie back and give myself to the effortless stream of life, buzzing and twittering and slow earth-growing all around me.  Overhead clouds shift their way across the world, collapsing and expanding, ever-changing. 

Here I am as long-lived as the chalk of the downland beneath and as fast-transforming as the melting clouds above, now falling on my body as rain. 

Here I know myself as forever part of things, seen or unseen.

Perhaps this life sounds lonely to you – and it is, sometimes, I miss other humans, of course I do.  But we are not the only creatures in this world.  Pain strikes deepest when we forget this.  So often we fail to see the life that is all around us, reaching out to us, beyond our human stories and our messy, complex relationships.  Humans can be remote, unforgiving, even cruel.  Relationship with nature is all-giving.  A blade of grass asks nothing from you. 

Nature is your portal to connection.  A simple world where you remember how to be simple, too.  Where you re-learn who you are, and what life can be.

So when you’re in pain from your isolation or the weight of your human relationships, go and lie yourself down amongst the grass and just breathe. 

Slow everything down. 

Slow it down further.

---

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Just listen. 

Everything hums in unified vibration, even you. 

Cradled in the quiet folds of nature, held up, supported, you begin to remember the truth that’s written into your bones.  The truth you’ve been forgetting since that frightened-child-moment when you first experienced rejection and, panicking, started trying to fit in. 

You forgot the fact that you already belong. 

You already belong.

Part of it all.  Here on this planet, infinite soul wrapped in a precious bundle of bones and sinew and tissue, the living miracle that you are.  One among everyone else.  A sparkling constellation of bright, bold beings, woven betwixt and between the other constellations of species, all an expanding web of pure aliveness.  Life wants us all.

*

Breathe.

Life wants you.

*

This is the place where you learn to trust again, where a new word emerges to rewrite your life, and that word is safety.  When, in the fullness of time, you rise up, other connections become more effortless.  Even people seem less remote, more available, simply being there.  You no longer need them to affirm your value or your place in the world. 

You can relax. 

Because you are already complete, here in yourself and your knowing of the vast wheel of life in which you are inextricably, intricately, achingly spun.

Whole.

This is the safe place where your inner child rises to speak to you, in sensations, in feelings, in words, of all the times she was not received by the world, the old human world.  The sad little one, the scared one, the unknowing.

Held up by the universe, you find the willingness to open the portal and listen to her cries, and here in the tender heartbeat of everything you rest together, in belonging.

One breath by one breath, you are changing your universe.

Lay yourself down with your back to the Earth, your face to the sky.  Settle into your senses and dwell here awhile. 

It will all find you.  I promise.

*

And then in life’s greatest gift, you begin to realise that belonging isn’t stagnant, it’s always calling you deeper.  Intrigued, you spiral, deeper into unity, deeper into the bright surprise of the uniqueness which is you.

Your sacredness begins to reveal itself to you.

And so at last we come to the most sacred moment, the one that I began this piece intending to share, the one which emerged from my life little more than a week ago.

I stood bare upon the hill, surrounded by wildflowers, an explosion of ox-eye daisies and purple campion and a thousand species of grasses.  A moment unexpected, unlooked-for, deep-needed. 

The flowers glowed, a luminous tender field in the dusk-light.  My skin steamed from the heat of the water in the outdoor copper bath.  Arising into the night, letting all fear go, bare feet upon the ground, bare skin welcoming the summer night air. 

I stood naked, looking at the world, the world looking at me.

*

Completely still.

Breath entered me.

All the world seemed laid out before me, it was as bare as I was.  My soul was at peace, suddenly at peace.

I breathed out.

*

Have you ever stood bare in a landscape, all of nature enfolding you, welcoming you, part of its belonging?

Perhaps this is a feeling we all deeply need to reclaim.

To feel safe again, in our own skin, in our place amongst all things.

It was our ten-year wedding anniversary and we had chosen to come to this sweet little cabin on a nearby farm, squirreled away in a private corner of the landscape.  Celebrating our lives together, letting go of all we thought it would be, allowing in the sheer brilliance of everything that it is. 

There’s a loveliness you let in when you just let your life be.

In the space of that being, all the loveliness bubbles up and celebrates through you, life giving life, life affirming life… 

I did not know, I truly did not know until the moment it unfolded, how much I needed to shed the hard shell of my clothes, my protections from life, and rest naked in belonging. Under the quiet sky, amidst the hushed world, delicate as the wildflowers.

The heat from the bath spreading my body, merging its edges with the softening air.  Stars emerging; stillness complete. 

Blackbirds flew in and out of the hedgerows, readying each other for sleep.  Bats emerged and flickered against the cobalt sky.  Still my body melted. 

Every wildflower dancing beside and between us, welcoming us home.

*

This, I thought as I stood beside my husband, both of us bare to the skin, softly breathing the summer air and watching the turn of the dusk falling away into night.  

This is belonging. 

I have never felt such safety or such trust.

Utterly accepted by life.

I saw dogwalkers in the distance and I didn’t mind.  It didn’t matter if they saw me.  Nobody seemed a threat anymore.  How could they be, when we are all at one with the landscape?

Thank you, I told the welcoming blaze of Arcturus, blinking at me from his light-years home.  Thank you.

Now I know what is possible.

*

This.

naked in the wildflowers

soul soaring

body safe, accepted, at peace

*

we belong

we belong

we belong

*

Go out and find it.  Rest deep upon the Earth.  Let it hold you.  Let it lull you back into the knowing of belonging. 

Let it slowly bring your body back to safety.  Let it help you find trust again.

And then go out and find a space where you can let everything go, in safety and in trust, and just be, naked in the wildflowers.

This is my prayer, for all of us.  That we all find such moments.  And that we begin weaving them back into the world, creating a new reality, for all of us. 

One where we are safe in our own skin.  One where we all belong.

It’s possible.

With love and trust,

Miranda