"i feel the earth move under my feet"

(our very first rose!)

guess i've never really understood what it means to be grounded. it's a concept i couldn't fully empathize or relate with. and now, my tracks are dug. i come home to a house. i have for the first time in a while a "permanent address."

and its strange because i love the here and there life, knowing my only real home is in heaven; knowing i am a visitor gracing a land on a seemingly long or short but nevertheless journey.

and yet the walls around me are so kind. and i am being shown what it means to stop. to sit. to dwell.

"So Moses addressed the people of Israel while they were in the land of Moab east of the Jordan River. He began to explain the law as follows: "When we were at Mount Sinai, the Lord our God said to us, 'You have stayed at this mountain long enough. It is time to break camp and move on. Go to the hill country of the Amorites and to all the neighboring regions-the Jordan Valley, the hill country, the western foothills, the Negev, and the coastal plain. Go to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon, and all the way to the great Euphrates River. I am giving all this land to you! Go in and occupy it, for it is the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, and to all their descendants.'"

Deuteronomy 1: 5-8 (NLT)

i dig into the land and see the fruit it grows. i see the first roses blooming on my doorstep. everyday i check the new greenery on the orange honeysuckle, the purple clematis, the shell plant, ever trucking. the butterfly bushes astound me. they sprout as in fervor like its a chase for daylight its limbs reaching out as if they had always been in there like a child's toy you pull to release the entire figurine. the dahlias test my patience growing like faith beneath my eyes inspection. the late bloomers are still slowly waking up from their winter slumbers.

i am learning the sun by the way the rays lean against the frame of my house and warm it in its glow. i see the birds coming, sipping and stepping into my water lily as if it is a birdie bath. i wondered how the lavender i planted was getting eaten. and then i saw him! our very own peter rabbit. his cute little white cottontail scurrying in and out of the garden getting one last bite before he dives under the pink rose bush in the corner. i see the squirrels come to play looking for nuts. i see the ants turning the soil. i see the butterfly cocoons in my honeysuckle and pine tree dreaming the dreams of the tree. we hear the owl in the morning and the birds all day long. the windows pour in sun splash in perfect waves. i am surrounded by life moving around me.

i try to reach inside. in jane hamilton's book, a map of the world, she talks about their farm house having a life. her husband loved how they could date their land back to the native americans. they had an attic in the farm house of relics from those who inhabited it through the years filling a prairie day trunk with images, journals, and time. my 1980 construction of townhouse complex doesn't feel like it has that same rooting history. and yet, i know the land does. my city of alexandria, virgina is older than our capital. even my relatively new house has held more voices than mine own driven into the walls like painted coats of hushed memories.

and now it is my turn. to let my house tell me the secrets of her life. she lets me comb through her dirt, to sift and sort, to pull weeds and think of my own, to cleanse our past lives, and nourish the soil with God's love to coat, cover, and encase us. this house. she is a gift to me and i am her visitor. her story will go beyond what i will tell. as will my own. for now we coincide a secret garden.

i used to dream about a physical cloud, an image to say, "there you are Lord! I can
see you!," thinking i would look up to see the Great Majesty draped over in a cloud hovering as if i am living in the tabernacle with my neighbor moses a few doors down. instead, God lets me see her clouded shape in more beautiful and rich tones the leaves on the trees, the sustaining power in front of me, making me know it is more to do with my own eyes being clouded than God living in one.

in their disbelief the israelites wandered for forty years when they were supposed to be living in the promise land.

"prone to wander Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart Lord. Take and seal it. Seal it for thy Courts above...."

Hymn: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing by Robert Robinson (1758)

why is it so hard for me to beg in one direction. to stay in one place without sight of an exit sign?

bigger than my body
by: john mayer

"...Yes, I'm grounded
Got my wings clipped
I'm surrounded (by)
All this pavement
Guess I'll circle
While I'm waiting
For my fuse to dry

Someday I'll fly
Someday I'll soar
Someday I'll be so damn much more
Cause I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for

Why is it not my time?
What is there more to learn?
Shed this skin I've been tripping in
Never to quite return

Yes, I'm grounded
Got my wings clipped
I'm surrounded (by)
All this pavement
Guess I'll circle
While I'm waiting
For my fuse to dry

Someday I'll fly
Someday I'll soar..."

sometimes i feel like i am two people trapped in one body. i have this need to flee and this encouragable hope to stay and take root. to as bebo norman describes, to stand and "watch the trees grow tall." i don't know how my emotions can be swirled into one. i don't know how i can feel equally passionate about seemingly contradictory yet fluid correspondence of my e-MOTIONs. why am i so filled with motion, movement, thought, life, energy and yet how do i crave so dearly my own space, time, and rest?

and how beautiful it is, when i wake up inside my own walls hearing the rain upon the panes of glass. a day to listen to all my old favorite records. to skip around our living room singing at the top of my lungs while bobby tries to nap on the couch. i know i am graced to be able to move, spin and dance upon this world just as much as i am to learn this new gift of dwelling and what it means to be grounded.

whether i moving around my earth or not...my feet rest upon an ever moving earth. tilting at some horrendous speed i could never remember the exact degree of. as i sit and stand and look around me. i feel her crawling with movement and life. i feel the plants in my garden pushing their way to the sun. the inertia for life connecting me to the greenness around me.

when i think of our house, one song keeps coming into my mind. an old cranberry tune. i imagine bobby and i crafting our life together just as he said we would one day when i sat desperately trying to get my espanol work done and he waited for me laying on my bed reading on my yellow sheets in my old lake house saying to me that he got an image of us together years from now living together.

"dreaming my dreams with you

and there's no other place

when i lay down my face

dreaming my dreams with you..."

its not just a dream anymore. we are dreaming our dreams together in the shade of shelter.