“The wind chime plays its notes softly,
it mingles with the songs of the birds.
I am silent, reading in the sun,
or am I? —
my mind is always loud with sound.
Rumi wrote: ‘your old life was a frantic running from silence.’
I am trying to move toward quietness now
but my feet, still running,
pound like a giant’s on the ground.”
–Victoria Barrett in I Just Wear My Wings
The audio recording for our free Creative Spirit Circle ritual this week is available here.
In the recording, I share two poems, some quotes, our cards for the week, and some thoughts on illness and healing. I noticed I sound kind of like I’m crying at different points in the recording, but it is really that I’m trying not to clear my throat too much, no tears! 😉 If you want to skip the parts about my experience being sick, I start talking about it at 9:50 and then stop at 17:25!
From Womanrunes this week we received the Broom, rune of purification and cleansing. This rune can be a very practical and direct rune—i.e. what do you actually need to declutter and clean out of your physical living space—and it can also be more metaphorical, asking you to consider 
what old thought patterns or habits need to be unwound from your brain and cleared away. Either way, this card asks you to pick up your broom and go looking, prepared to sweep in all the corners. Don’t be afraid, you can clean it away and start from a place of freshness. What are you “sweeping” out lately, whether physically, emotionally, or metaphorically?
From the Botanical Inspirations Oracle deck we received Trumpet Gentian, a medicinal plant for power and healing. It asks us to consider: “In your desire to heal and grow, summon your strength, not through will, but in patient acceptance of the process that is required to bring true recovery.” What are you healing right now? How are you growing? How might you need to dig into your patience with the process rather than trying to force it?
In the book Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton, she quotes Simone Weil as saying: “absolute attention is prayer.” Sarton goes on to suggest:
“…if one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, snow, a cloud, something like revelation takes place. Something is ‘given,’ and perhaps that something is always a reality outside the self. We are aware of [divinity] only when we cease to be aware of ourselves, not in the negative sense of denying the self, but in the sense of losing self in admiration and joy.”
She goes on to describe looking at a daffodil and asking herself, “what do you want of your life” and then realizing, “with a start of recognition and terror, ‘exactly what I have—but to be commensurate, to handle it all better.’”
What do you want of your life? To what are you paying absolute attention? What is the “current” of your life asking of you?
Affirmation for the week: My absolute attention is prayer. I purify and heal.
I’ve also reopened our Voices from the Red Tent class here and you can join it for free with the code “listen.”
May you be healthy, may you be strong, may you delight in your own life, and may you take time to sweep in all the corners.
And now, dear circle members, the rattle passes to you…
Join the Creative Spirit Circle 
Membership in our Creative Spirit Circle is FREE and packed with beautiful, bountiful resources, including a companion online classroom, free Womanrunes e-course, Goddess Studies and Ritual class, weekly virtual circles in our Facebook group, Red Tent resources, blessing posters and mandalas, access to Divine Imperfections sculptures at 50% off, and your monthly Creative Spirit Circle Journal filled with resources such as ceremony outlines, book recommendations, articles, sneak peeks, and special freebies.