What Becomes of Fear

 

 I met an old woman in the woods and we celebrated above and below. 

Her blood cold and skin gray, silent whispers swaying in leafless reflection, "I'm a home with no walls, no shame, no fears .... no God's green earth buries my feet....little by little I am given to the stream"

~  wanderings from the floods -April 2008 ~

______________________________________

Heavy rains pummeled the area once again Thursday into early Friday, adding insult to injury across already water-logged drainage basins. Generally speaking, 2 to 5 inches of rain fell in a 24-hour period ending at 7 am CDT Friday, April 4, 2008, with some locally higher observations exceeding 6 inches. The heavy rains caused numerous reports of flooding and closed some roads that were impassable just a few weeks ago during the major flooding event on March 18. While the water is receding in some areas, waters on area rivers will remain high for some time to come. 

_______________________

There is a country to cross you will

find in the corner of your eye, in

the quick slip of your foot--air far

down, a snap that might have caught.

And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing

voice that finds its way by being

afraid. That country is there, for us,

carried as it is crossed. What you fear

will not go away: it will take you into

yourself and bless you and keep you.

That's the world, and we all live there.

~William Stafford

_______________________________________

I am reminded to give what gives to fear, exposing roots is a time worn practice. Assuredly, that which is deeply held grows, pushing insides out and outsides to closer embrace with the very environment in which began this now visibly beautiful rooted growing pattern.