“When life feels too big to handle, go outside. Everything looks smaller when you’re standing under the sky.”
–L.R.KNOST
We were traveling last week and the shop was closed. I made the recording for our weekly mini ritual for the Creative Spirit Circle available here. 
Rather than type everything out, it is all in the recording this week.
Though it is exciting to go on adventures, even fairly small ones, it can feel hard to get ready to go somewhere, to wrap up details at home, while also packing, planning ahead to return, etc. On Friday, after a long day packing up orders, I went outside and laid stretched out on the ground, arms open, eyes closed, sun pouring down on me. It was a beautiful moment and I felt so restored.
On Sunday, even though we were supposed to be packing for our trip and closing down our shop, Mark and I set off through the woods to the bigger spring. We didn’t have anything with us (except for some goddess figures…of course!) and we weren’t really prepared for a hike through the woods, but we did it anyway, and it began a sort of pilgrimage, a microcosmic “heroine’s journey.” I am in love with discovery. I love observing the world, feeling it, breathing it, being it. As we walked, the air was literally scented like roses and I was so alive as we explored. THIS is it to me. This is goddess. Life in the palm of her hand.
“Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or 
bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.”
–Mary Jean Iron, in Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much
Our actual trip, to Hot Springs, AR, was really nice, though we did break down on the way, had to be towed to a repair shop and then had to wait around in an unfamiliar town for five hours while it was being fixed (we also feel really thankful that there was a tow truck so close, that the repair shop could access the part and actually make the repair the same day, and that we were still able to get to our destination before dark).
It was humbling and staggering to me that the water from these springs originally fell 4000 years ago. It is super hot! Seeing the only two open hot springs in the park (the other 45 have all been capped and diverted into bathhouses) gave me the same kind of sad feeling that I get at zoos or animal parks. It is caged when it really wants to be free. 
“Drinking the water, I thought how earth and sky are generous with their gifts and how good it is to receive them. Most of us are taught, somehow, 
about giving and accepting human gifts, but not about opening ourselves and our bodies to welcome the sun, the land, the visions of sky and dreaming, not about standing in the rain ecstatic with what is offered.”
–Linda Hogan in Sisters of the Earth
May you enjoy blue skies, normal days, and ancient water.
Affirmation for the week: I am as free as I allow myself to be.
And now, the rattle passes to you…