When a Wild Heart Questions
Advent Reflections from River Raven Sanctuary
In this sacred season, as Alaska embraces the longest night, my heart stirs with wild questions. Here at River Raven Sanctuary, my lodge home on the Kenai River, waxwings dance against pewter skies while the land teaches me daily about presence and patience. I rest in this stillness, lingering upon the lines of John O'Donohue's poem that return to me each year, speaking new truths to my questioning spirit.
This year, rest and reflection feel especially poignant and necessary. In the past eighteen months, I've walked through a valley of losses: my Dad died unexpectedly, my brother suffered a burst brain aneurysm, and Kula, my beloved Labrador Retriever, is no longer at my side—an undetected vascular tumor swiftly took her life in May. Yet even in this landscape of loss, grace is present. My Mother and Father's two lively young Labradors now live with me, and we've been bonded since their birth. Friends show up with steadfast care and kindness. My Dad, my son Justin (1989-2006), and my Kula-girl continue to encourage me from their spiritual vantage points beyond the veil of time and place. In this liminal space, questions bubble to recognition, and I'm aware that my life is in threshold time again, something becoming wild inside, where words have waited for my freedom and hunger.
The past 48 hours, flocks of birds mesmerize me, their movements a dance of question and answer, call and response, in the overcast skies. They land in birch trees and shrubs ripe with pea-sized berries, then in a synchronized dance, take flight. Hearing their Waxwing birdsong, seeing their small feathered black bodies fly, then stop, only to wing away while a Raven or Eagle soars up or down river in the clearing wind invites me to open the present. Breathing in the crisp spruce tree scent and woodsmoke from my neighbor's chimney is pure gift. Unlike these winter Waxwing visitors arriving for a very brief seasonal visit, I am nesting with "the voice that first whispered the earth…" into being, as O'Donohue's poem invites.
Celebrating ‘love’ on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, during Winter Solstice threshold time (the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere), I reflect how Jesus might birth anew in me on Christmas and ask myself,
"Where is my 'yes' to life, Spirit, God?"
And I also ask, quite literally now as I curate my business, the River Raven Sanctuary lodge,
“Is there room at the inn?”
The question echoes both practically and spiritually:
“Who do I welcome into these physical spaces?
How do I create sanctuary for others while maintaining my own?”
Like the innkeeper in the nativity story,
“What visitors might I be called to shelter and welcome?”
I'll be wintering and celebrating the twelve days of Christmas, culminating on January 6—Epiphany, the time when gifts were brought to the Christ Child. I'll ponder in these next two weeks,
What gifts will I offer, give permission to grow in me, in this coming year?
How might I give permission to the Word of Spirit alive, here and now? How might I open the present that is offered? How might you? How might we?
I share with you "The Annunciation," my inspiration poem, and invite you to contemplatively read each line, in a lectio divina process*
The Annunciation
Cast from afar before the stones were born
And rain had rinsed the darkness for colour,
The words have waited for the hunger in her
To become the silence where they could form.
The day's last light frames her by the window,
A young woman with distance in her gaze,
She could never imagine the surprise
That is hovering over her life now.
The sentence awakens like a raven,
Fluttering and dark, opening her heart
To nest the voice that first whispered the earth
From dream into wind, stone, sky and ocean,
She offers to mother the shadow's child;
Her untouched life becoming wild inside.
--John O'Donohue, Conamara Blues
*Lectio Divina Process
Process: Slowly read the poem four times, once with each section, pausing to reflect on the offered questions, or whatever is made known to you. Notice if different lines from the poem pop out and catch your attention with the rereads!
Lectio
What do you notice? Write the word, phrase, image or impression that catches your attention.
Meditatio
Let the meaning of the words or image from the lectio enter into your mind and heart. Stay curious. What could it mean in relation to your life now? What feelings emerge within you? Is there a message for you?
Oratio
What do you want to speak to a loving Spirit about? Do you hear or sense a prayer of longing for yourself or someone else? Pause to simply listen to what rises in you.
Contemplatio
Rest in silence, presence. In what way, if any, do you experience that presence now? As you quietly open your mind and heart, what is a loving Spirit guiding you to do or be?
Read “The Annunciation” one more time, then offer thanksgiving for this time and any guidance or insight you received.
IDEA: Share in a comment any insight that bubbled alive in you from this process, poem, or any of my questioning I’ve shared.
Peace be with you – you will be in my prayers each day through these last days of Advent and Christmas season. To you, my friends, who celebrate Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Bodhi Day, Yule, and other sacred traditions during this holy season, I offer you blessings in your practice. To each of us, wherever life finds us, in these last days of 2024, from my peaceful place on the Kenai River, as I nest into River Raven Sanctuary, I will be cultivating a field of grace, love, delight, and depth, while connecting heart to heart, spirit to spirit, beyond time and place. May you feel this embrace as the untouched life inside of me becomes wild and alive, ever questioning, ever seeking, ever finding grace.
Love,
Pegge
PS: I'm posting photos and short captions or reflections in Substack notes a few times a week – they don't arrive in subscriber inboxes since they aren't posts like this one. You can find them in Substack in my @Pegge "activity."