A farm…retreat

My son and I spent a day on a farm yesterday. It was sunny, we met new friends.  My son and I had loving and stress-less time together.  We harvested vegetables that we took home and cooked the same evening. I felt rhythms to life that are centuries old, but are ebbing away from our culture with iPhone speed. Rhythms of growing food, caring for animals, collecting eggs, and riding horses. I did not read email or Facebook on my iPhone during our stay there. It felt wholesome and wonderful, and I felt a new rhythm for my own life beginning to emerge. I did take some photos…

The softness of rabbits

My son grooming a horse

Toward the end of the day we wandered in a small grove of trees and each found a tree to connect with its spirit. Often I do not speak up or share my inner experience with others. But this was a small group and I felt safe and welcomed to speak. I told them as I embraced the tree I immediately felt how it is always, at every moment, connected to the earth. I felt the earth ground strongly through my feet. This is what the tree shared with me, to always feel this grounding, my connection to the earth.

Later we rode horses. I haven’t been on a horse for almost 30 years. I’ve always loved them, but it is true I don’t like to “control” them. And of course when you ride a horse that is what they say, if you aren’t firm and don’t control, they will sense that and wander and do whatever they like. I have had a bad experience with a horse taking off with me on a trail ride when I was much younger, galloping along until it finally stopped to eat some grass. It is a bit of a mystery to me to be honest. Of course if you are riding a horse, you need to direct it to where you would like to go. Sort of like steering a car. Yet, it is an intelligent being, it is nothing like steering a car. It is an agreement. I found something happening with this horse that is similar to a process I have seen in the healing work I have done. When there is the open space of Love, patterns arise to be healed. Horses have patterns too. I don’t actually think that control is required to direct, and yet in the space where control is not happening, what is required to continue directing can be very interesting.