Earth Magic
earth magic—the only kind you can access every day
If you seek magic in your everyday life…start here—
Know a thing for what it is…not the things you would project onto it that you would want it to be. This perspective will serve you well.
Know that opening and brick and mortar business…is a lot of cleaning, and changing the water in the vases for the flowers, and sweeping the floor. It involves turning lights on, dimming lights, turning lights off, whilst turning heat on, managing the temperature, followed by turning the heat off.
Know that a daily spiritual practice is less about levitation and the heavens pouring down into your crown as it is about staying open to the idea of hearing the sound of your own breath and staying open to the idea of finding the spaces, however tiny, in between your own thoughts. And showering yourself with grace when, alas again today, your seat did not hover off the cushion and god didn’t drop a download in through the top of your skull, but you did breathe, and you did have enough time to say to yourself I am not my thoughts before the next thought rushed in.
Know that sitting down to write anything is a lot of wrestling with your thoughts and encountering of frustration when the realization dawns that the collection of words that were so clear and made so much sense in your internal voice have lost their rhythm and clarity when you go to write them down. That the epic poem that wrote itself fully in your mind during the dog walk mostly eviscerated itself by the time you scoop the poop, wipe the dogs wet feet, fill her bowl, and ages afterward attempt to get down scrabbled on paper or pounded into keyboard any merciful fragments that are still left.
Know that being in a friendship, or a marriage, or any relationship is getting to know and appreciate a human being for who they are right now today not who you want them to be or hope they will be tomorrow. That your life’s successful seasons may very well coincide with your loved one’s challenging seasons, and / or vice a versa, so you may not always be on the same energetic wavelength, or riding the same wave, so to speak.
And most importantly, after all this, notice (with a slight sense of humor please) your surprise, the surprise that arises when the sun has risen and set enough times and you are so notably deep enough into these tasks, the juncture in the journey far beyond the early bail out off ramp and you say, Ahh this thing—the project, the person, the hope, the task, this life…turns out to be exactly what I knew it was in the clear light of the everyday and not what I hoped it would be in the fantasy rose-colored hue of a someday that might not ever come.
Is it truly surprise you are feeling? Did you, a tax paying grown up truly not expect that a building needs cleaning, and a relationship needs tending, and that dust will accumulate in the corners when you miss a sweeping of a room in the same way loneliness will edge its way between you and a friendship not tended? Did you truly not know from ages of tales about writers writing that most days the words don’t just gush out and most times require a patient-yet-vigorous out-of-the-soul coaxing?
You are a clever girl, so no, it is not surprise you are encountering, but rather, the feet-tethering-to-the-earth-right-here-and-right-now sensation that you cannot circumvent the laws of nature—that you cannot circumvent life’s efforts of tending and simply arrive at the prize—the perfect career, the perfect relationship, the perfect book. That feet-anchoring-to-the-Earth-sensation is a relief, yes, a sobering relief, that removes the veil from your eyes. Now you see the potent-est of magic—you cannot bypass the errands, elbow grease, and actions of living…and try to call it a life.
Your life is calling you to sweep the floors, to fill the dog’s bowl and wipe her muddy feet, to encounter the frustration of the words when they simply do not gush forth, to smooth the edges of the oceans of loneliness between you and another by being present to their truths and their experience of who they really are day in and day out, who they are today, and not yet who they might or not ever be…tomorrow or some day or ever at all.
Your life is calling you to live, to please live. To pick up the goddamn broom, to sob into the keyboard, to gather into your arms and into your heart the work in progress of a person who requires that you love them today in medias res in the thick of all of it and not tomorrow. And when all that is over, somehow, your life calls you to have so much depth left in your own heart to look in the mirror at your no makeup face after the longest of long days and whisper I love you.
And when this realization shatters you completely, your awareness of that highest duty to love yourself amidst all of the agony and beauty and responsibility and beauty of the sweeping, and keyboard pounding, and surfing life’s wave alongside another, sometimes close together, and sometimes farther apart yet still alongside, there you are, all of your perfectly-imperfect pieces, held by the Earth in the only place where your life can be felt—right here—in the only moment when your life can be lived—right now.
You can love all of this today—the dust that needs sweeping, the words that need coaxing forth, the one who needs loving today exactly as they are, and the sweeping and coaxing and loving…includes you, too.
Beware aggrandized before and after depictions of where one starts and where one can go when the reality is simple really—one day we are born into this body and on some day thereafter the body dies. Concern yourself not with beginnings and endings, because of those we are already certain. As the saying goes, none of us is getting out of here alive.
Instead, concern yourself with everything that happens in the middle, the version of it that it is today and not what you thought it would be. Miss enough todays, and you’ve missed your entire life. Tether your feet down into today, and you’ve tapped into that attainable-on-an-everyday-basis-if-you-actually-want-to-be-present-to-the-work-of-your-life I call Earth Magic. Earth Magic is the kind of non-sorcery rooted in today; it requires no spell or conjuring other than the acceptance of all that roots you into the here and now—the lines on the face that looks back at you in today’s mirror, the sweat and aching back behind the corners swept, the droplets spilled and wiped up of the plant-water changed, all the loved ones held for who they are not who they might become.
Earth Magic isn’t a magic to circumvent old age, infirmity, and death…it’s the magic that ensures you don’t miss your life. The Earth Magic I have come to know doesn’t promise anything other than the chance to feel something, and by the tears rolling down my four-decades old cheeks, I can promise you that Earth Magic works, and it works every time, because the thing about this special kind of magic is that you get to experience it today, you get to live it here, you get to feel it under your feet right now. You get to feel your life for the gift that it is today—a unique collection of heartbeats and breaths that have never been beated before and will never be breathed exactly the same way again.
It is the magic you never have to wait for. No spell ever needs to be cast.
It’s the kind of magic that doesn’t have to be conjured. You can tap into it anytime…if you are ready to embrace life’s truth that the mess of what you can choose to love today is far more breathtaking than the false allure of a tomorrow’s perfect…that never comes.
The earth beneath your feet and the weight of your bones and the beating of your heart cast their very own spell of their own accord. All you have to do is open your eyes…and your arms,…and your heart…today.
What sorcery is this? One who can sit on her cushion non-levitating on the earth and embrace the feel of the earth beneath her seat, right now, is a powerful one indeed.
Earth Magic is what you can coax to life-fresh flower water; walking the dog, sweeping the room, with your own two hands today and not tomorrow.
Earth Magic is working with what you’ve got, not what you want, and calling it beautiful.
Earth Magic is breathing deeply into joy enough to notice it before the next emotion takes joy’s place.
Earth Magic is when disappointment teaches you, but doesn’t break you.
You’re a star…not in the sky somewhere far away, but right here on solid ground—it’s all here. It’s all right now. Embrace that, and then you have everything, and YOU are everything, at all times, right here, and all at once.
M
