Sometimes I sense that my life is a like a long hard labor, where most of my work is simply to get out of the way and accept gravity, but over and over again I find myself in the thick of it, resisting, struggling, trying to wrestle what would do better to be left along or embraced.
This month I’ve had the honor of being present for the labor and births of others. I’ve had the chance to see what it is to give birth gracefully and to be witness to the unfolding of life over and again as it is.
First I got to travel late one evening to the neighbors to watch their oldest cow give birth to her calf. All went well and a little bull was born. Everyone was hoping for a heifer, but this bull came out as calm and sweet as a calf can be.
Then just a few stalls down I got to witness a handful of wild turkey chicks hatch under the wings of a hen. A few days before as my neighbors were haying the cutter bar scared up a wild turkey and exposed her nest. So the eggs were carried down to the barn and slipped under a broody hen. What big feet those little turkeys have.
Then a week and a half ago I was with my oldest friend as she gave birth to a little boy. So this is how it is: we give birth to life, to the softest, sweetest baby in our arms. We are born, our eyes open, arms and legs reach out, we root for our mother’s breast and relax along her belly as we explore all the spacious light around us. Beside us, our father’s presence.
Then this weekend a memorial service one hillside over for my great uncle and great aunt. She died this past winter and he died twenty years ago, but this was his service also as no service was held immediately after his death. Family and friends came from all corners back to the land that has been circling through the family for generations. The hills greeted us with open arms.
And last night my sister arrived from France, where she lives, to spend the rest of the summer among family. She came with cheese. Impossible to describe the taste of the meadows and culture and years of sitting in the cool of caves that have transformed this milk into soft and hard cheeses, yellow and white, covered in herbs and rinds. Here they are to look at on a plate along with my first little calendula blossom from my seeds I collected in my Vermont garden last year and planted in my New Hampshire garden this year.
Oh, I’ve not written much about my garden, but it is good. Beautiful and abundant and full with the hot summer and dark cool earth. Life is blooming and dying there just as it does when all is well.
I’m reading the book, The Lion’s Roar: An Introduction to Tantra by Chogyam Trungpa. He is conversing with a student and speaks of “that which eats up the universe.” And the student replies, “what does that?” and Trungpa responds, “What doesn’t?”
