LOCATION,LOCATION,LOCATION

You know she* is everywhere here, from the deepest canyons to the highest manmade structure. You know where she came from. From the heart of the One Creator. You know where we came from: from the heart of the very same Source.

Why? For choices. Is it a game? Depends on your definitions. Is it folly? No. Is it caprice? No.

It says: ‘for He so loved the world.’

The Earth was made as one world among many, but one very special, and therefore, needing caretakers.

The caretakers though, have yet to pass the test. This is the ASVAB for stewards. We are failing. As a whole, we seem to care so little for our Earth Mother, that we tear her apart in order to make monuments in our own image and after our likeness… our vain imaginings.

Allow me to digress and grow personal for a bit.

I loved Iowa. Other than vacations to the Rocky Mountains, Manitowish Waters, Mammoth Cave, Chicago and one memorable trip to Boston, Iowa was my home. I did well there. Well enough anyway. Life was fairly calm and reasonable. Both typical and atypical in many of the ways of  family and marriage and jobs, when suddenly it all sort of imploded and I wound up with an ultimatum… move to Florida or else.

Like Ruth, whithersoever he went, I resolved to go.

Culture shock. Sunny south Florida was an instant nightmare for this Iowa country girl.

It took a while. I evolved. I grew into it. I learned to love it. It wasn’t a choice so much as a slow development of a comfort zone, creating home where I was, simply because that’s where I was. I made lifetime friends, and lost contact with the ones from Iowa. A few letters and a couple of phone calls, the twenty-five year class reunion, and slowly all contact ebbed away.

Several trips to Missouri to spend time with my transplanted family remnants: sister and dad, were as close as I got to the ‘homeland’ again.

Solo journeys out west on a sort of ‘walk-about’ mission expanded my view and my love of this beautiful land we call America. And when I went home, it was to Florida.

Ups and downs and poor choices that did not feel like choices but inevitabilities peppered the Florida experience with stories to tell and heartbreaks to heal.

But at some point, I realized how much I had grown to love South Florida. The heat can be difficult, but so can heat anywhere. The traffic can be annoying, but so can traffic anywhere. Hurricanes… well, you can plan for them, and are easier to live with than the suddenness of the tornados that season the Midwest with discomfort at times.

Another sudden implosion ignited an explosion that sent me alone, to make a new life in Tennessee. Why? Poor choices I thought, but in retrospect, Tennessee has been like going to school for a degree in a topic I had no interest in, although, I have found that now that ‘graduation’ approaches, I can see that as much as I have been harmed financially and emotionally by these six troubled years, I have been blessed to a much greater extent by the trials and the lessons and the contacts that I have experienced here. I often kid that the Chamber of Commerce will never hire me, since I have nothing good to say about Nashville, and that is true to an extent. This is a culture in which I have not been able to sink roots. It is a place to visit if one is so inclined. It is a little country town with big metropolitan aspirations, a little skyline of which they are every bit as proud as they are of their guitars and country music, Confederate history and the Civil War battles and graveyards that dot the landscape. The twang which many find enchanting, grates on my grammatical sensibilities and niggles its way into my own lexicon like a virus for which I have very little immunity.

In spite of being cheated and robbed and foreclosed and financially ruined, I have met and made friends with a handful of very special people that I will always hold dear in my heart and that I hope will also value me as a lifelong friend. I have met dogs that have touched me in ways that few others have. I have lost two thirds of my own dogs that moved here with me. I have had heartbreak. I have learned firsthand what depression is, I have dated idiots and some dear but troubled souls. I have made no significant romantic connections.

I waited. Long and determined, I waited for a burning bush to jump up in front of me and tell me what to do and where to go. Fearful of my own tendency to make poor decisions, I wanted the Creator to intervene and outline a path for me.

When it happened, it surprised me. The burning bush said it was up to me to make up my mind and decide where to go and then said my decision would be supported and I would continue to be blessed.

The temptation of Missouri is great. How I would love to spend time with my wonderful nephew, Eithan. He grows so fast. Each day his maturity astounds. At eight years old, he expresses great wisdom, caring and joy. He will be a fine steward.

And so, as I endeavor to downsize my accumulation of physical anchors that hamper my mobility, I pack and ready myself to go home. Prodigal? Yes, in a way. My path home to South Florida is my path to my future of greater mobility. Geographically dangling once again on what I enjoy referring to (if you will forgive my crudeness) as the penis of America, I shall fall back, re-group and ready myself for my next steps forward to the completion of my mission.

I remain a potted plant: unable to sink down roots into this wonderful land. The choices are many. I shall perhaps become a tumble weed.

No longer knee-jerking responses out of fear, my choices shall be determined by gratitude and love for that which has given me life in this beautiful land.

And that’s the thing. All parts of America and all parts of this Earth have great beauty. I acknowledge the beauty of everywhere I have lived and visited. I mourn the destruction mankind has wrought upon many areas and many life forms in it’s (their, our) endeavor to ‘have dominion’ and to egoistically make monuments to themselves and through force to have power over others.

I mourn, but I endeavor not to condemn. For to condemn, is to resist and to fight and when we resist and fight, that only makes the job harder. A muscle resisted grows stronger.

I have this container where I am sprouting seedlings from my citrus fruit. I imagine they will be unable to produce fruit themselves, but the foliage is cheery. One cold winter’s day I tossed the seeds of a pepper into the pot because I didn’t want to trudge to the compost bin. I forgot they were there. They knew where they were. They sprouted and grew and continue to grow, and now they bloom. Coddled indoors, without the weather to force strength into their stems, they are limp and weak as the tenderest vine. Will they be strong enough to fruit? I do not know. I simply have observed that this indoor protected, coddled placement has not given them their needed opportunity to be all they can be… to weather the storms of life: and yet, they continue to grow and to attempt to be productive. It is their nature.

Sometimes home is not the best place for us to grow. Remaining in a comfort zone does not expand our horizons much.

The joy and the beauty of this world are gifts from our Source and true stewardship is our duty to support that beauty with our choices.

Oh Eternal One, forgive me my poor choices and help me to make choices that bless.

So mote it be.

* ‘she’ refers to Mother Earth