Healing Arts

When I let the nagging fumes of doubt escape, the air is scented with the fragrance of joy.

Fumes and fragrance - photo by Stephanie Maxwell

The cow meanders in the grassy knolls, the familiar mounds.  Ruminating.

The shepherd urges it forward – but the cow knows not of the waterfall and the magnificent gardens ahead.

The grassy knoll has blades of grass – mostly grazed and barren, but it was where once the cow was fed.

It’s a familiar comfort and the comfort of the familiar. Even though the grassy knoll no longer provide the sustenance it once did.

The shepherd knows the destination and gently veers the cow.

Like a four-year-old going to a new school for the first time, the cow moves slowly, fidgeting, frolicking.

It’s not a playful frolic, but more an anxious delay.

Today, my emotional mind is a cow. The rational mind urges it ahead to the magnificent plains that defy her greatest imagination.

But she knows not where the path leads, she only knows the grounds that fed her once.

Her grip on the old is still loosening, but slowly.

The unfamiliar seems unknowable.

The shepherd and the cow

Buried beneath the dust storm of habits and churning thought.

There is a greater vision of something, soaring beyond the confined plot.

I blinked for a moment and could not see clearly, my vision blurred by a hazy glaze.

The push and pull of routine and emotion, mapping a muddled maze.

With trepidation I broke one habit and examined the shattered shards

Oh I was following  a set pattern, without observing my hand of cards.

Therein there is a King with a vision that is  sharp and keen

A Queen with a softer gentleness, artful and serene.

And beside the 4′s and 5′s,  a Jack of Hearts stands by

A  joy for living is his gift but he is not afraid to cry.

What a wondrous set they are – in life’s sport they sway.

And there it was, I joined the game and now I am ready to play.

Hand of cards - photo by Brooke Stevens

When the Universe wills, it is but when it won’ts, it don’ts.