As I get ready to pass the mantle of well keeping on to Carolyn Seavey I wanted to post my appreciation for this vessel, this circle of well keepers and its simple yet bold request to ask us each to slow down and deeply listen to what is. It has been an honor to hold a piece of it, and to witness the whole of it. Today was made sweeter by the gift of carrying this precious mantle.  

Blending silence with song, and then layering in poetry . . . what magic, what depth, and what a powerful day of tending it has been.  Sitting in the stillness of fresh Vermont snow on an under carpet of crisp fall leaves.  In the centering that comes with stopping and settling into the silence, the words of a Ma Muse song came into my bones —“It is time we take ourselves into the well”.  Singing that song into the chambers of my heart, and finding myself in that echoing knowing place, the well spring of wisdom that comes from deep listening and being with what is, I felt suddenly the embodiment of being the well. . . . so I simply sat with the fluidity of that sense of being one with the wellspring. . . . . sat with the knowing that time heals, that nothing good comes with forcing, . . . sat with being the well and knowing that we are all water.  We are all made from drops of the high mountain lakes, and the great and mighty oceans, and our own collective salty tears.  We are made from the pain, the joy, the knowing and not knowing, yes the great mystery is what we are made from, what we are made of, and its beauty and its pain is what we need to lean into, live into, breath into, and be fully present to. . . . yes, be the well and all it’s wisdom, “it is time now that we thrive”.

As the reverberating ripples of that first song settled, another song floated in to the mystery of that echoing stillness . .  a new song from Heidi Wilson “In the great unraveling, I love you.” . . such a simple song that says it all.  My whole being melted into this love and the understanding of the power of its ability to heal this beautiful and pain filled world . . .and in the depth of that clarity the last lines of a Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer poem came even deeper into my soul:  “To love as if it matters, as it the world depends on it”. . . . . because it does. And the tending we are all doing of this well is turning us into a river of love and healing that is truly needed in these troubled times.  Thank you for the gift of tending.  May it be so.