following your dreams – The Light Behind the Story

The barred owl in my apple tree this past fall

I think perhaps I will miss the old apple tree more than anything else. This first friend whose woody trunk I clung too in times of sorrow and joy. If I move before spring, I will miss her flush of blooms spread over the patio like a canopy of tattered lace. That play with the sun before her petals drop like spring snow. Ephemeral wings blown away with a wind that brings the budding orbs of summer. I will miss her sweet apples, stunted by shade and the organic burrowing of worms.

Sitting in an old farmhouse, someday I will recall the gathering. Full bowls brought into the kitchen to be parsed and boiled with cinnamon. Browned pulp squeezed into the food mill then left to cool. I will think of the small hands before they waved goodbye to childhood, scooping the sauce of her bounty into eager mouths. No need for sugar. What a gift to be fed by her love.

And I will miss the birds she held through birth, and those that searched her giving body for substance through the seasons. Those downy heads of woodpeckers drumming winter’s rhythm. The inverted gaze of the nuthatch seeking the downward hunt. Robins nesting in her leafy boughs just beyond the reach of the cat. Trusting. I cannot forget the orioles who always chose her showiest days to flash their orange and black bodies like forbidden royalty before her petals lay her bare each summer. But then, I shall recall the barred owl peaking through the gray day of my window from her steady arm to tell me , “It is time go and build your dreams.”

Yes, I believe it is the one who bore this life with me here, who I will miss the most when I leave.

Double rainbow near Newgrange in Ireland taken during my recent visit

Yesterday, while driving into town to get groceries, a car pulled up beside me at the stoplight. The license plate on it read “Optimistk.”

I opened my email this morning to discover one of the Good News feeds I follow was featuring an article about optimism. Hmmm…maybe a shift was in order.

I like to call myself a realist. But I’m also a dreamer. Sometimes my dreams are dark, and sometimes they are filled with light. I can be a chronic worrier. It’s something I need to constantly keep I’m check. I can fall easily into “what ifs” and dwell upon the gloomier state of the world and my own individual circumstances. Sometimes, it takes active work for me to shift my downward focus up.

Yesterday, and this morning, I was reminded of what brings me joy and allows me to expand instead of constrict the light within. My practical mind can hold onto tangibility and lack in a way that serves only the gremlin who feeds on the shadows inside of me. We are of little service to the world when we hold onto impossibility.

I have a vision that feels so expansive sometimes, I cannot find its edges. Each time I let it arise, I feel the bubbles of Joy percolate out of density. It is an exquisite dream, and even though I cannot yet label all of the paths to its center. I believe it is expressible. This is my test of optimism. And it’s a big one for the science-minded, practical Virgo that resides within. But I am not wiling to let it slip into the shadows of impossibility. Instead, I am going to keep feeding it with the light of expansion and (actively) watch it unfold into being.

Are you holding onto a dream that seeks to be lifted up? Is optimism calling to you to, asking to be expressed? If so, perhaps it is time to allow the unfolding.