Let What You Love Find You

February 19, 2023

Sunrise 2/11/23

They bulldozed the field at the entrance of the neighborhood this week. The one with the grove of trees where the hawks nest and the owls hunt. The one next to the park where the wildflowers bloomed. The last wild field near my home, the wildness I fell in love with in 2020 when we couldn’t venture further. All the others have already become homes, roads, and businesses.

All winter I have been watching the vegetation, dry and brittle from the summer drought, wondering how - if - it might come back in spring. Each week a new tree falls. Today I notice beaver has been working on a tree that still stands at the water’s edge. A tall tree, one the herons, crows, and woodpeckers have perched in so often. It too is likely to fall. Soon.

The lake itself is full of dead trees as it was created by flooding some fields about 40 years ago.

They are proposing a landfill¹ one mile upwind from my neighborhood and sitting on the watershed for the lake I photograph each day. The ecosystem that supports all my feathered friends, the beauty that sustains me is at risk. It’s across the street from a water tower and an elementary school. I pray we can stop it. I pray the money that is buying politicians will not prevail over the voices of the community. I pray that if the politicians are lying to us to buy future votes karma comes for them in a hurry.

I’ve noticed lately as I’m walking my anxiety is higher than usual. My mind spins on bulldozers, drought, and landfills even as I’m walking among the still-very-much-alive trees. This morning I stopped and sat on the ground. I asked the question, “what do I need to feel?” I could see the wave that is building behind my protective wall. The one that contains both my love for this place and my fear of the heartbreak that can - will - happen if it dies.

I’ve heard it said that everything we love will die. I struggle to open my heart in the face of this truth. I want to “live with my heart outstretched as if it were my hand” as Susan Tweit writes in her poignant book, “Bless the Birds”. I want to follow Rilke’s advice to “love life so generously, without picking and choosing, that we automatically include it (death) in our love.” Yet I am afraid.

I was afraid of the owls too but I am making peace with them again.

I have often used a quote from my favorite author, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, “Find something you love and let it teach you how to live.” I think of this quote as a guidepost by which I live my life. It’s been on my “about” page here and on social media for many years and I reflect on it often. This week, as I was looking through my stash of quotes, I found a different version of this quote that stopped me in my tracks:

“Let what you love find you. Be faithful to it. It will teach you how to live.” - Oriah Mountain Dreamer

On the surface, the quotes are nearly the same. What struck me was the feeling shift between “finding what you love” and “letting what you love find you”. The first feels - controllable. I love the lake, I love walking, I can hold all of that almost at arm’s length and enjoy it without it piercing my heart. If I chose it, I can choose something else.

To let it find me? That feels like letting it in. That feels wild and uncontrolled. That feels like letting it see me as much as I see it. Letting it become something that will rip my heart to shreds when it is hurt, ailing, or lost. Yet - it already has. I simply hold the knowing at arm’s length as if that will protect me. My head spins on anything it can to keep me from feeling how much I love it and how deep my grief will be if it is lost.

Does the lake see me too? It made little k's for me in the ice. (also notice the difference in color 15 minute made at and just after sunrise!)

Last spring I took a tarot class with the amazing Julia Inglis. I had been curious about tarot cards in the past but when I drew the “Tower” and “Death” cards repeatedly in early 2020 it scared me and I put the deck away. The cards weren’t wrong as it turned out - but I don’t always want the message they are giving me. Julia helped dispel many of my fears but I still wasn’t sure I wanted that much direct communication with the universe. I tucked the cards away, wrapped in a scarf.

Last week a dear friend bought tarot cards and started drawing them daily. This encouraged me to get them back out and see what the universe might have to say if I was willing to listen. In four days I’ve drawn 3 cards:

The first card I drew was the queen of cups. Queen of the water element, queen of her emotions. Comfortable and solid in the water. I notice how focused she looks. I love this card - though being comfortable with emotion and being focused are both things I struggle mightily with. Not only did I draw her the first day, but since then she’s made two more unplanned appearances. Yesterday she stared at me when I flipped the deck over to put it away. Today I dropped the cards and the one card that flipped over and looked at me was the queen of cups. She has something to say to me for sure.

The second - and fourth - card I drew was the ten of wands. When I looked at it I thought, “he can’t even see where he’s going, he’s just plowing ahead”. My friend said, “that card looks like holding back the wall”. The third card I drew was the tower. This is a card Julia helped me with a great deal. She changed my perspective from wow that looks horrific to, “the tower frees us from a house built on fear. It is a force of nature, bringing you down to earth, to the truth.”

Forces of nature can destroy - and also bring beauty, like this sunrise in a bit of ice.

It’s humorous really, the idea that the universe won’t find a way to get its messages across. I can either open up willingly or wait until it finds a way to scream at me - like the hawk that went screaming low in front of my car. Yet something in me likes to think I can just hide and it will go away - just like hiding from love. Or exactly like hiding from love, since I believe that love is the stuff the universe is made of. Not the hallmark card, pink hearts fluffy bunnies kind of love but rather (as my best friend and I once sang in a song we made up) a love that is “dark and strong and has led me all along”.

Perhaps I’m finally ready for the cards because I’ve learned to hold interpretation and messages a bit more lightly. To look at them and see what I feel and then let them develop on their own without my mind definitively deciding on what story they are telling and either flipping out or concocting a story that isn’t so scary. Perhaps opening to the cards will help me open to the other things I fear - like love.

To find the fearlessness of the young eagle - or maybe the seasoned eagle who has experience loss and gained resilience?

Perhaps I can open to the messages of the universe as I’ve opened to the birds. Terry Tempest Williams said, “I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear.”

It’s easy to pray to the birds and hope they will carry messages on their feathered wings.

This week I saw an empty oriole nest still hanging on to a bare cottonwood tree. A home built to nurture life that’s stronger than it looks, surviving the unprotected winds of winter. Perhaps my inner home is more like this than I think.

I still have so much ice beauty to share so let’s end with that!

Bear paw?

Champagne flutes?

Look at the intricacy of all those bubbles!

And to end with a little humor, that’s a “hard no” if I ever saw it!

1. I’ve also been told by a credible source the landfill is a political show, to justify the state getting involved in local issues. The same people that want to keep our cities from issuing public health orders, banning plastic bags and running their own police departments are the ones fighting to defeat this. I don’t really believe in hell, but there certainly should be a special place in hell for people that play on the fears of others for personal gain.