One of Those Mornings

Wow, it’s one of those mornings. It’s hot and clear and bright and maybe it’s just my eyes but everything seems to have a glow that lifts my heart and makes me feel elated, looking out at our Resource yard from my relaxed station today. Having a part time job does not suck.

Listening to some Grateful Dead tunes and sipping chilled tea. Back and forth between reading my book, “Sacred Plant Medicine,” and helping customers. Some smile and asking if I’m learning about plants when they see the book and their demeanor changes to a softer tone, one of respect or reverence or kinship.

I sell some picket fence, some plaster to a friend, and irrigation parts all while listening to Sugaree pleasantly play in the background. Chill, chill, chill. I almost feel high I feel so good but it’s not a habit of mine to smoke before work. I’ve gotten to prefer the feeling of sober. Especially after going to shows and watching the drug use and abuse lower the energy of the scene. It’s like we feel we need those substances to give us that edge, almost as if we don’t believe we have the power to feel it all without them.

But I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.

They may open your eyes but they can turn into a crutch. Use them to learn the lessons they have to teach and then put them away on the shelves like well-loved books. You can retain the knowledge, the enlightenment, the ecstasy, the connection to the all, without them. Trust in the magnificence of the bodies we live within made up of other smaller living pieces obliviously working together. Going about their own lives as we go about ours here, only faintly knowing that we ourselves make up the living parts of the planet earth, Gaia. What kind of consciousness does she have? I’m not sure we’ll ever really know, just as our own individual cells and biotics don’t know ours.

Do you feel your connection? On the best days, days like today, when the sun is shining just right or the trees and planets have that dewy glisten, or people are pleasant and happy, feel the power in drinking a fresh pure glass of water.
“Drink water,” I told a friend the other night with eyes aglow.

“But tequila gives me energy,” the girl with jewels on her face and enlightenment just shy of her eyes tells me.
“It may,” I tell her. “But water gives you life.”

She never did drink that water just poured another shot and threw it back. I’m not saying not to do these things. I’m no strict rule keeper. Everything has its time. Everything has its place.

And mine today is with a smile in a simple little repurposed shed looking east into the sun, listening to the Dead and the beep of our old red forklift. Smile. I hope you too can notice the beauty in the simplicity or your own view.