The Highlands of Scotland are covered with heather.
Beautiful iridescent scattered pinks, purples and whites
Painted on ochre peaks.
Every year they burn the heather down.
Burn it to the ground,
but in patches, so that some lives whilst the rest,
like a chessboard of balance,
goes down to the root, to the origin.
They call it 'controlled burning'.
It is wise, methodical,
not crazy, random or out of control.
Though gentle and balanced in intention
it may appear to some as being somewhat brutal.
Soon it grows back, lush, green, fresh
and the grouse can feed on the new life
and be sustained, nurtured by its reborn nectar
They can grow.
If the heather does not get burnt down,
the grouse cannot reach the shoots.
It's too high up,
the legs are woody, old and no longer 'feeding'
the newness, the freshness of life.
So too we have to embrace creation's dark twin.
It's easy to be 'good'
to make things nice, better, happy, fuller, and brighter.
No one wants to be the villain
No one wants to feel what it may take to say 'No',
to say 'I don't know if I can do this,
this isn't feeding me,
I'm not growing here anymore'.
It takes a certain kind of wisdom and courage to say this,
because your domestication requires you to stay
in stagnant situations.
Breathing in the same air out of duty,
responsibility and 'doing the right thing'.
The lungs, however, grow weary and cry for the fresh.
I noticed that this limited thinking for me was alos a kind of arrogance.
As if people I loved or situations I was in could not carry on happily without me.
As if I'm stronger, I can take the suffering more than them.
I can take more sacrifice than them.
I pretty much turned my martyrdom into an olympic sport.
But when you are wild again, the shackles have to come off.
You love people enough to set you both free.
Yes, you love people that much!
Your love is no longer the love of duty,
the love of 'supposed to' or 'meant to’ or 'should'.
No, your love has become something else altogether
It has become real.
Some parts of your life, like oak, will get stronger,
broader and bigger with time.
Some parts of your life like the heather,
will inevitably need chopping down
so something new can grow.
Which is which? Creation or Destruction?
We just have to listen, really listen.
They both come knocking with a truth
that cannot be hidden.
As the beautiful Marianne Williamson says
'Sometimes Love says No'
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