No matter where you are, no matter what concerns you still hold within your heart, no matter what questions are emanating from your mind, they will be met with a response. T4:12.5
There’s been something churning in me the last week or so. Do you know what I mean? Have you experienced being in this zone? When something—neither a thought nor an idea—is in you like a niggling, a low murmur akin to the sound of distant thunder, or a rumbling, as of a truck two blocks away.
I can trace the coming on of this “not quite there” feeling, back to when my friend Christie came to visit, and when it felt like a day to sit in the cabin. In the last few years, since the house
is often empty, my friends and I more usually share our visits there. In this way, the cabin has begun, once again, to feel more like a hermitage. A place of solitude.
As Christie and I walked out, I said, as I almost always feel compelled to say, “Excuse the mess.” And she said, “What mess? I love it.” As we passed the disintegrating fence and the rusting lantern hung from a tree, she told me, “They look like pictures from Maine.” And then yesterday, likely with that prompt, I took my camera out with me, and found my favorite photo to be of a dried and twisted grapevine. I know the beauty in this disarray. It reflects something that is passing in and out. As if mimicking my surroundings, what most often occurs is not a cognitive turning of the wheels of thinking that create structure, but a churning down-under that causes structure to fall away.
The harmony in the wild, the decomposing, the not yet formed and the in-formed that is losing its form—feel like existence in a blended state. That’s what my modest terrain reminds me of, very subtly, like a whisper come to replace (or compliment) the rumble.
Because there is, at times, a charge that exists between beauty and disarray—in the world and in myself. The recognition of the difference between the tangled webs I can weave with my thoughts, and the undoing that makes a spiral 
from a twisted knot, or a space that reveals the heart of the matter.
Then I understand about the movement from the entangled to the woven-together, that it is the next step, the movement from viewing what’s on the surface to seeing the depth beneath, and the blending of the two.
The joining.
It’s taken me a long while to accept it all and not to call some of my thoughts by names that I consider slurs, like “ruminating,” and others of them by names I elevate, like “contemplation.” I am still discovering the subtlety of judgment. But I am making these discoveries.
If “I” can enjoy the coming of a discovery such as this, and not malign the tightly wound places as the untangling occurs, I know each of us can cease to evaluate our discoveries with judgment. We can hold it all together gently, compassionately, and allow ourselves to keep going deeper with whatever process takes hold of us.
When the deep is reached, the way of getting there has already fallen away.
Take delight in these surprises. Laugh and be joyous. You no longer have a need to figure things out. Surprises cannot be figured out! They are meant to be joyous gifts being constantly revealed. Gifts that need only be received and responded to. T4:12.6
I do enjoy your messages. Thank you . LOVE!!!
Hi Mari. I’ve just discovered your blog. I need another word for gratitude/grateful; no…not a word, more a kin to a song that I know so well but have never heard.
I too have been experiencing, for awhile now, the “zone” to which you referred. It’s like an anticipation, something wonderfully mysterious nearby, a feeling un-named, but requiring none.
For the last few days, I have been working on untangling a very delicate, intricate and once very beautiful tree made of silver wire. It’s been around the family since the late 70s. When I found it, it very much resembled your twisted vines, each one with a story to tell. It wasn’t as much a call that I experienced as an invitation to create a new expression of a previous form. The metaphor was not subtle; it made my heart sing. I sensed quite clearly the smile on Yeshua’s face.
I also am amazed at the subtleties of judgement borne along in common parlance, but delighted that I’m more awake to them. The need to judge language or myself has diminished greatly, although my “Given Self” is sure to have outbreaks of personal expression. Human and Divine, not a complete bliss ninny compelled to squash personal feelings. It’s all in the response, and for today I choose Love.
Thank you so very much for sharing your experiences and feelings. Having a forum in which to share ours with you is just pure Grace. With much love, Mary
Hi Mary, I am so glad you’ve discovered my blog and that I get to discover you! I love how you have added such beautiful words to my own, and the unusual connection we share with the “tangled.” I have found in my photography (thank God for all the ways in which we can be creative) that I am almost always more interested in something that is hidden. We go forward revealing the hidden…if you know what I mean. I now see this as so much of the way of creation of the new…and that it’s calling to us!
YES!?!
Beautiful, Mari. Just beautiful.
I’m so glad that these are being forwarded via Glenn and Take Heart Publications.
Love, Celia
Hi Celia, Yes, the subscriptions have been restored on the Course of Love website and it is so nice to be engaged in this way again!
Paula, Thank you for giving me this acknowledgment that what I feel I am only “attempting” to say has been said well enough to reach out and touch you. The way that twisted grape vine spoke to me just couldn’t be denied, and soon, from right within my surroundings, there was that dialogue that arises with nature, the dialogue that reveals and shows us what we need to see. And thank you for also seeing the subtlety of judgment…without judgment!
Mari, I have read and re-read your comments 3 times, and am sure I’ll do it again. They feel almost musical to me, so many levels, the deep upholding base notes, the runs and trills of the surface.
You say “It’s taken me a long while to accept it all— I am still discovering the subtlety of judgment.” That is just where I find myself, that’s part of the tangle of my old mind set. The grace, the beauty that awes me is the heart-sight that blesses all tangles and watches with glee and willingness as these tangles become the spirals you mention.
Thank you for the depth and love in this post!
Dearest Mari in all your communication s I always get the deep feeling you convey the words are super wonderful and your live and intention always touch me your love touches the amazing journey we are in tgether many blessings and calm peaceful
Hi Timothy, I appreciate so much that you’ve shared that “deep feeling” arises in you when you read my words. Couldn’t that feeling in you reveal the joining of “us” … the sense of heart connection that ACOL opens us to allow? Thanks for sharing that!