the Tao is a many feathered thing or best known in the bone

from the sea (5) – the end of coming home by freda karpf

These are things best known in the bone, not always ready to articulate but a structural part of one’s knowing.  If you were unable to move forward, maybe this can help you. The intersections touch our lives and some bring us to a direct relationship with nature. It is not complicated. It is right there.  Baubo was engaged in the right place at the right time.  All that are present are meant to be.    

~

     People who share their stopping points and the green lights of ideas and metaphors that have helped them move on move us on to being more of who we are.  In this way every journey’s lessons are shared with those on many different roads.  

~

     The AT may cover more than fourteen states or even fourteen states of mind.  It allowed Baubo to recognize where she was called to was where she belonged. Our work is expressed through our being; even through the living we have done; even while not knowing any particular purpose. When Baubo moved, like the water moves, in and around the Sedge Islands, she felt connected to the trail, and felt like she was coming home again.

~

     Each time she came to the wetlands it felt as if another advent door opened for her. She always knew what she might see. She never knew what she would see. The genealogy behind the old birds lives in the flight of the new.  They still fly, they soar above and drop their legs to land with both grace and power; they inspire.  We know all of them, each one is from a family down the line from the old birds. They are familiar. Common as salt. Coming through time and changes to be what they are, elemental, fundamental. They hold our vision the way a tree allows small birds to slip into it for shelter and integrate into its world.  Each one is important. Each feather among the thousands has a purpose. 

~

     The old birds carry the culture, the dreams and daily realities with them through to our wetlands and waterways, our reflections and streams. The rivulets and braids in the mud and sand weave a living history of the water’s journey through the tide to the further outback; from the ocean, through the river’s basin and through the turns and turning, into the channels where the egrets sit in trees waiting for low tide and the eagles watch; where the swans allow the currents to carry them and the kingfisher dives and flies around back to the same branch rattling its way home.

~

     The unified field of the Tao is a many feathered thing.

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf