HuckaMeme (September 2015) by Keith...again

HuckaMeme (September 2015) by Katie...again

HuckaMeme (September 2015) by Josh

HuckaMeme (September 2015) Keith

HuckaMeme (September, 2015) Katie

Fear (July 2015) by Katie

My boot pushes through the tall grasses on the way to the chicken coop

I keep a watchful eye for snakes and wonder

Why is it that I never see a snake when I’m looking for one?

We cannot always be so alert – it would be exhausting, distracting, wasteful

I stick my fingers through the deer-proofing wire barrier to the coop

Highly aware of the spider webs I am touching

I very nearly step on the thinnest end

Of a thick, egg-eating rat snake

How? How could I not be expecting this

When I was that very moment thinking about it?

The things I fear in life are like a snake in the coop

I'm going to run across them

But fear won’t prepare me

Mother's Day (May 2015) by Katie

Last Spring I blogged here about prayer and a "consuming hole at my core that is emptiness and loneliness and also what it means to be alive". And I can't get the thought out of my head.

I'm glad others raise the issue as well. Joy, Kate, and I talk about it a lot - this unquenchable thirst. This melancholy. This "God-shaped hole".

And we talk about our reaction to it. To fill it or numb it; to watch shows or eat treats. To prove each day was busy and successful. To reminisce about better times, to dream about better times.

I found a quote that hits the nail: "I am homesick for a place I am not sure even exists. One where my heart is full. My body loved. And my soul understood."

In last Spring's prayer post I reflected on a scene that still comes to mind: An incident where Wren was sick. She could not be consoled. She clung to Joy crying, "I want Mommy".

I know that feeling. 

I want what "Mother" represents, beyond the bounds of human capacity. I want the female divine.

---

I don't know what we're supposed to do with this emptiness. How to be with it.



It has driven humanity to explore and create; to chase the sun past the horizon; to paint the likeness of animals on the inside of caves; to reach up and touch the moon; to splice the cells inside us; to build, to cure, to discover, to invent, to achieve.



And still we are incomplete.



And that's a good thing. If we could fill the hole ourselves, as maybe we still assume we can, our entire motive would be to compete and consume. But that unquenchable piece of us pulls and pulls until we realize we need more than the story we can weave with our own spool; more than what we alone can know or do. For all our success as evidenced in salaries or Facebook posts or checklists, we feel incomplete. And so there must be something we cannot quantify. Something unnameable, even, and certainly not human. Maybe God. Maybe Goddess. Maybe the spirit of life around us; an inter-being, and a rediscovery of lost relationship and balance. I've touched all of these, and I have felt great, big feelings of connection and fulfillment, heart, body and mind.



And still I've ached with want.



How do we respond to this urge in a way that does not pillage and consume? In a way that does not numb or distance? What is left but to accept and love our incomplete selves?


It may be that women have an advantage in this arena. What distinguishes women from men if not holes and caverns. Empty wombs. Shedding of walls.


And mother's must know it even more acutely: That the world needs the low and empty spaces.