Bedrock.

The night time is gathered all around me, the hills alive with the murmur and hush of deer bedded down in the snow and the heavy quiet the mist brings- hanging in the air, and in the trees and sage around my cabin, like white magic. Smoke from my chimney joins in the stillness of the midnight and adds to the illusion that this is the extent of the world, this piece of land and this small cabin in the woods is all there ever has been, is all there ever was.

It is nearing 1am and my candles have burned down.
Today was beautiful. Cluttered in the awkward way a day is when it doesn't have a set direction; but I walked down my mesa in the evening and the mist landed in gentle droplets on my face and hands, it beaded on my hair, which was loose over my shoulders, and it beaded on the black and white coat of my ever gleeful Border Collie.
The pungent smell of rain on juniper trees and on the wet earth was strong in the evening air. It's incredibly familiar scent reminded me steadily of the tall, sweet smelling eucalyptus trees on the edge of the ocean in California. Shrouded in both sunlight and fog. Something that feels worlds away tonight, but something I have been craving, deeply, for weeks now. It makes me homesick for the ocean.

Tonight, on my way back up the hill I chanced a meeting with my girlfriend Marian. We live just a few acres apart up here in this hill-top bare, but, beautiful, haven. She invited me over for tea and a catch up. The 6 and a half minute walk was through the snow, to her back door, and her fire glowed with welcome as I shook off my snowy boots by the door.
We caught each other up on our past few weeks, over cups of ginger tea. The air was gentle and solid. Witnessing the growth and love and struggle in each other. It really brought home how satisfying it is to be understood, and how satisfying it is to be there and be present and to understand, on a level deeper than that of the mind. But on that inner, deeper place, where secrets are kept and dreams grow.

We talked about the various men in our lives -it's funny to have gone from nada mucho to something with so much clout in just a few months- but God has his timing and I am not complaining.
As the clock ticked ever forward, towards the new day, I finally left my chair by the fire and with a good farewell hug I donned my boots and coat and trundled back out into the snow and up the road to my cabin. But our conversation lingered with me and it got me thinking about, love.

Love. Something I find myself riveted on constantly; and not just the sappy romantic comedy version of love. I mean real love. The kind that gives off light.
The kind that is real and so deep it is the bedrock of our human existence.
    I watch so many of my friends struggle, waiting to be called upon to join Love's army and bleed in the battle of being understood.
But we are all warriors and all capable of true triumph, simply by going within and really loving what we find there.

Because that's the thing about real love. It's not about deserving it. It's not about earning love tokens like browny points. It's so much deeper than that. It's about connecting to the love within us. Its about being real and facing yourself, even with your flaws and your shame, it's finding the core of yourself and loving that, deeply and without reservation.
This has been shown to me in many reflecting forms in the past seasons. Unconditional love.
     For me it's loving myself, first and formost, accepting those things that I sometimes feel are unlovable, reaching out and touching the things about myself that scare me.
It's letting God work through me and though the people around me. It's having faith.
It's about loving someone, who may never walk back into my life, because my love for them does not end when our souls cease touching. Unconditional love is deeper than romantic love. It is all encompassing.
It is for the soul inside of them, regardless of how it affects you and your life. And in that I am free.

Something, I think it takes going through, before you realize your freedom lies in loving and letting go.

It's in trusting my gut and knowing my heart. It's speaking those three vulnerable words into the improbable air.  Because I know them to be true.

To love is a fierce and incredible action and to be loved deeply, without reservation, is the greatest gift of all.