down to the sea again

Please note that this is the end of riding the waves, a tale about being home in the world. The entire book is available through this blog or can be purchased on Amazon Kindle.  Wishing everyone peace in their hearts, justice in their lives, community, persistence, nasty women, water protectors and ways to connect with what is really real in the natural world.

     If you begin with the beginning then you’re going back, way back to the salty sea.  The trip is going to be wet and briny.  If our ancestors crawled from the great oceans onto the beaches you can imagine, as some have already done, that they contemplated their beginnings before taking that devilishly difficult first step. It’s a new life and you might be grateful for the plentiful and giant gulps of air.  But there is always going to be resistance to your growth or a need to adapt to the circumstances so that you can get on with it.  Life begins at the narrow margins where the waters touch the land.  But to get to the beginning you sometimes must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky.

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     An unknown presence guides you to the shore. The same water that is the sea was the ocean we all once swam in our mother’s belly. This is the water that grows us.  Our life began by moving through the narrow channels.  We meander through the cavernous place of the sea toward a beginning.  We learn to climb ladders and work calculators. When Barry died Mrs. Scattergood stopped creating.  Her spirit lay in a bowl like a dried prune.  She had to find her way back to the world again.  The river in the ocean had taken her back to shore.

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     If we could just trust that everything will work, that the net will appear, that the Universe has our back; that we are in the Tao, one Tao at a time, we would have more peace. There are moments when any one of us has this feeling, it is a full body understanding and we really get it with sparks and shine.  When that happens we are “in the unified field of the Tao.”

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     There are currents we are in that connect us to streams in time, places we love and people we have lost in our daily lives.  One thing that impresses about the currents is their permanence and how we move in and out of them throughout our days.

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     Mrs. Scattergood headed home.  She carried the sea in her. And sometimes the sea carried her.

from  a river in the ocean (7), the end of riding the waves  by freda karpf

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

a river in the ocean

Please note that this and the post that will follow concludes riding the waves, a tale about being home in the world  by freda karpf  -  I hope you enjoy each bit and feel free to start at the top and read through to the end. riding is currently available on Amazon Kindle.  Thanks for reading and doing good.

     Nostos is the Greek word for homecoming, the idea of returning home from a long journey. Nostos can also mean ‘Welcome Home.’  There are many ways to return home, to find your center, to go to the place where you belong. Sometimes you just have to turn around and walk the path back. And sometimes even that is a long journey.

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     Tomorrow, if the time and tide is right, Mrs. Scattergood will go riding the waves. She would like to believe that Barry, in some other reality, is watching the snow come down while he's having a cigar on top of the mountain.  It’s his New Year’s Eve dream. He’s up in Vermont, he just had a good meal with his wife, and he’s standing in the doorway of the cabin doing his “Sweetheart” Humphrey Bogart routine.  All he says is “Sweethaaaaaaaart.” Then he bellows the cigar from his end while the flame is pulled against the cold into the tobacco.  And he listens to the snow coming down.

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     Barry would phone her now and then from the road broadcasting his philosophy between service calls.  He decided that a life review was critical to reach his goals. He began to do them every six months. But after his first life review he thought it prudent to do them more frequently so he switched to every three months.

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     Mrs. Scattergood’s life review came unexpectedly when Barry died and Baubo showed up in her kitchen.  Today was an odd day in her life.  It was full of wonderment, evolutions of grief and the short inhalation that comes from resolve.  She took a step toward home and a step back into the world.  She’s never going to stop being who she is in the world but she was different than before.

from  a river in the ocean (7), the end of riding the waves  by freda karpf

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

they will find each other

“Taoists speak of the Universe as wan wu, the “ten thousand things,” – this does not imply that it is simply a sum of separate objects. Things (wu) are not so much entities as differentiations or forms in the unified field of the Tao.  This follows necessarily from the principle of mutual arising.”  Alan Watts  

     Demeter, Persephone, and Baubo could have crept into Mrs. Scattergood’s life when she wasn’t looking.  Or they were always there and it was a very long hello before she actually got to know them. Decades.  Mrs. Scattergood liked to think she carried the sea in her, as did Demeter and Persephone. We all carry the sea and the sea carries us.  Mrs. Scattergood searched for her mother and learned how she belonged to the world completely, how she is loved and a part of the air, the seasons, the soup, her friends, memories, the cicadas in the evening, the wind in the trees and her parcel of land.  As did Demeter and Persephone.

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     Mrs. Scattergood knows that she was looking for someone and at other times for a way of being in the world she was separated from.  Baubo came to remind her that we are all connected and the idea that we were ever alone or not a part of the weave was a bad dream.

raga or the 10,000 things (6), they will find each other by freda karpf

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