The Joy of newness

This was written by a friend of mine who is going through amazing, though sometimes turbulent, spiritual changes (by all reports, real breakthroughs are often very turbulent). It expresses some of that which I'm going towards/searching for, and which I can feel is out there. - Eolake

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Where have I been? I feel like I have been far far away.
Perhaps in thought-heaven. But the mobility is coming back,
all the senses opening their windows again, like women in Italy leaning out, great simple beauty, I can hardly believe it.

Truly wanting to be here. Smelling things as though for the first
time. This is not bliss. This is not excitement. Wood held by fire is not excited. But what LIFE! Where before I was dead, now I am alive. That's almost all I can say. I have almost returned to the joy of my second-graders when they are let out of school.

It is like tasting clover honey after living in Sweet n' Low land.

I feel the deep need to grow herbs. I was making salad dressing tonight, chopping garlic, thyme, squeezing lemon, the scents were
wild. Olive oil, balsamic vinegar, I mean, what is special here?
People have been cooking for centuries. Only I feel like a child who has come back home to the earth, to real food, scents, sounds.
It is all registering as love. When I was a child I felt at home on earth, I was ecstatic to run around in the green grass in Spring.
It is like that!

A friend just broke up with her boyfriend. We went to the wine-tasting, something I had always avoided. Wine tastings. Today, the oysters,
the taste of a new wine, flirting with life, no more afraid of the
energies of male and female. Now, it is originating within, and being mirrored without... The server, the wine store owner, lifted my spirit with his humor. We were laughing despite her earlier despair. I bought a bottle from Israel, a Pinot Noir I had never tried. I thought it fitting for Holy Week.

Alive from the dead, Jesus moving beyond the churches. This is the true Easter, for me. Having already burned to ashes in the Void,
by a great miracle of Grace finding oneself like a little girl, only only mature now and free and adult, droplets of creative juice returning like old, old friends. "I thought you were gone forever!!" Tasting new life in everything, like a wine, like a friend.

Great great gratitude. eminent and creative. Thank you my Lord.

Laurie