The re-birthing of Spirit, Body and Bus

March 21, was the first day of Spring, officially, and it couldn't have been a more synchronous beginning in  my world.

There is an idea that is coming to Life outside, the big white bus I touch everyday, there are my children - all recently aged by a year, there is newness all around, there is a spiritual renewal, there are babies being birthed. . .

In accordance with the sacrifice of the Lenten season, the kids and I have simplified our diets and subsequently my budget by resolving not to eat out for the forty day season, and I have made a more drastic promise - a 14 day live juice fast.  Beginning on the arrival of the season of birth, re-birth, renewal, forgiveness, Life .  .  . I'm on the late side of day 7.

As I have waded through the first week of cravings and stumblings and grumpiness - also clarity, strength, and empathy - I have also had the lucidity of realizing the comparison of new, real, lasting change in myself - my spiritual and physical and mind-self - and that of an old school bus from middle Tennessee.

Last Sunday Matthew and his daughter and my kids drove 30 minutes away to collect some bones from a dumping ground behind a railway yard.  Someone gutted several deer there and left the bones, obviously for me to pick up.  I found them last year on another Sunday afternoon drive.  Not out of morbidity, nor anything dark, but out of respect and awe of the life we are given, the life all around, I collected these simple remains of such beautiful and simple creatures.  I have ideas of bones on the bus - I need something of God's with us, not to be surrounded by the wasteful and tacky stuff of man exclusively.  Mercury isn't keen on the idea, but we'll see how much I can explain to her.  We are a parting-from-the-normal-ideals family after all.

This bus, Sirius, has been given new life.  A completely different one.  So have I, so have you.  How many lives do we live?  I have never been so acutely aware of the virgin elements that each springtime bring.  It is overpowering with potential and hope, nay, faith.  Hope is not necessary where there is Faith, and Faith is the one thing I thrive on.

So as of tonight - wire is all pulled, contact with the solar power man in Florida - purchase pending - floor completely varnished (and I'm not doing it anymore!), getting the back door measured tomorrow to replace glass broken from a storm last summer, waiting on recruits to spray in foam insulation from the sweet people at Foam It Green - http://www.sprayfoamdirect.com/ - and a feature article in the Johnson City Press, and a whole lot of laundry, even more dishes, baby-sitting, doula-ing, cooking for the kids, juicing for myself and coaching Matthew in his first fast, praying, yard work with the weather, and trying to figure out how all this is going to work with my funds while maintaining that Faith-based attitude, or just a PMA in general (positive mental attitude).  Also reading Gandhi's Passion by Stanley Wolpert (http://www.politicalreviewnet.com/polrev/reviews/PECH/R_0149_0508_159_1004330.asp), broke myself in a community Kung Fu class at church, learning daily of communities abounding with Idea and Love and Truth - http://www.larcheusa.org/ in particular, also attended a meeting of others at my home church interested in exploring community more deeply last week - which opened up several avenues of discussion between myself and others who have lived in intentional communities, spurring on such networking with very little effort - it's in moments such as those when I realize that I cannot turn back now and decide that that career in business or nursing or searching out a good husband (reverting back to Little Women era, which me and my little woman watched together tonight) was actually much more of a sensible route. . .the door has been opened, and I find myself outside deep in the woods, but on the path nonetheless.

I have no doubt or fear of this Idea that is nothing new, being birthed.  When Emily was in labor, when I was in labor, when we all were in labor, we want to hold back and refuse to accept the power that lies in us to birth new life.  I find myself holding back from fear of the power that is fueling my new life, the kids' new lives as ambassadors, servants, companions, students.  But no matter how much I try to hold back or stop gaining ground, situations and opportunities and people are left on my doorstep in little baskets, with little notes pinned to the satin lining - "I am yours".

You can share in our faith, too, even if yours is only hope for now.  Let the baby grass under your softened winter feet convince you of the better days that are promised, soon.