here's how we're gonna make it through february: inhale, exhale.  i'm not gonna tell you the grief pulling your heart through the floor is momentary, it's not. february feels heavy. too many anniversaries. too many deaths. too much heartache. too much. so i'm thinking about daffodils coming up too early and surviving the next cold snap and how this is an invitation and commitment to survive, to grieve, to keep loving, to keep growing... i am extending this invitation to anyone who needs it.

ash wednesday valentine: remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.  i figure this means that loving must be nothing short of a revolution. we get to do this on our terms and you know, i think this call to repent ain't the same as hating ourselves. more like an invitation to shed the counter-revolutionary systems and behaviors that do not serve us in the long run, to feel light enough to be able share the load again. remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. i figure this means that this revolutionary love don't come easy and sometimes our hearts are gonna have to break open, unfurl, and unfold to let all this in. remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.  revolutionary love can happen on our time and furthermore i think this call for discipline ain't the same as punishment. more like an invitation to empty ourselves of these rigid expectations for how and when love is supposed to happen, to make space for a soft kind-of loving- not without boundaries- the kind that is malleable and firm.

i think it is the way the light blushes from the belly of them hills feels like a soft knock to the breast bone, that makes it so hard to leave. all the time it's took to remember how to slow down long enough to be returned to, measured through a season of short days and long nights.

i've been dreaming of a house with wood floors and a clothesline outside, a house to bake bread and finish quilts in. i've been looking for a way to slow down.