Come, now, to your place of rest. Not your bed, for this is not about sleep.
Find a chair, a place on the floor or a large log in the forest lying on its side where it fell after all those years of standing tall on the only spot it ever occupied in the core of the deep woods. Now it’s smooth bark offers itself to you. See light as you have never seen it before – how it creates new things through its shadows. Why is the shadow not like its parent? Look at the shadow of the twig, look how the sun changes a hanger (click on the photo I took in 1978 to enlarge.) Consider your own shadow & how it changes in the shfiting angles of sun and moon and Love.
Go, now, to that place within. The place where you sit at the crossing
& watch the train of your thoughts steaming by. Before you close your eyes, you see.
There’s the male cardinal
in the evergreen. You wait & watch knowing she’s nearby & soon she appears,
shadowing her mate faithful as a Geisha. But she is not her mate…
It is the nature of cardinals to mate for life. But the shadow is not
a copy of the thing it seems to mimic. You are mated to yourself for
your journey across this world but are you divorced from yourself?
Are your travels marked by speed? As you watch your life are you
startled by your own velocity – by the difference between your shadows
and yourself?
If you love your life, why are you so anxious to rush through it?
The finish line will come and the prize goes not to the
fastest, the craftiest, the richest or the one who was the busiest.
Your shadow is not you. Your shadows have their own fascinating forms
and each shape is cut from the outline of the light around you.
..
Here is your chance. You are a caregiver who can decline, as you may
have in the past, the old invitation sitting there on the table with
the bills and the third class mail addressed to Occupant.
But this is your personal invitation addressed not to your shadow but only
to you. Today you can choose to accept the invitation to live your one & only life
on your terms – the terms outlined and filled in by Love’s light.
..
Come, now to Love’s invitation. Sit, rest, breathe. Nothing matters more than the
pair of cardinals
hopping limb to limb. Nothing matters more than the cedars swaying to the tune
of the wind. Nothing matters more than the rhythm of your breath & the people
out there you will be able to love because you accepted this chance to rest.
Busy fingers fall still; eyelids close to the song of daylight, the music of dusk.
The distant click of your Blessing Train glides down the track of your life,
comes to a stop, unloads its passengers onto the platform where you greet each, not
all at once but one by one, as if now is the only time and today is your holiday.
.
Today become a guest at your own table of Thanksgiving. Sit with all of your
different-shaped shadows. Celebrate each with open arms. Pick one to revisit awhile.
There they are – all your gifts, all your best angels, all your beautiful shadows carved
from light & gathered in the circle of your love. Come, rest, rejoice in Love’s glorious
invitation.
Say kind things to your shadows & to every person you encounter today.
What you do to others, you do to yourself. So be a lover & watch Love flood your heart.
Journal of Sacred Work 
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