fermenting

There was a moment this morning when I felt the world was holding me together. 

D was playing with E before he left for work.  I had just finished cleaning up from breakfast.  My tea was steeped.  I checked on the bowl of fermenting dough on the counter -- my first try at a slow-rise, no-knead bread.  I loved seeing how active the yeasts are.  I checked on the sauerkraut.  I can't open the crock, but I put my ear next to it and listened to the bubbling for awhile.

I opened the blinds in the living room and looked out at the turning leaves.  I can harvest more yarrow before the weekend.  The rowan tree's branches are heavy with berries.  Those crazy violets are still out there.  Meanwhile, other plants are shrinking back into the ground -- letting go of their urge to grow and moving their energy back down to their roots.

I took my cup of tea into the Creating Room so that I could check in on a few friends.  Crescent Dragonwagon has a very moving post up about appreciating the astonishing wonder in her life -- past and present, old loves and new loves, death and life.  Near the end of the piece -- while still working on her "good think" -- she talks about finding a bounty of wild mushrooms growing near her home.  She harvests some of them and carries them back in her pull-over, wishing her beloved was there to witness the moment.

And I think that there is so much fullness and life right here.  Even in death and in letting go.  There are wild yeasts in the air that are slowly working on the dough in my kitchen.  The cabbage is decaying and may someday turn into kraut.  The leaves are falling and will become moldy food for the very roots that nourished them to sprout.  There are wild mushrooms growing in a secret place, ready to be gathered by a creative spirit with a heart so full that it breaks over and over again from the wonder in her life.

Even the losses in our lives nourish us -- sometimes in ways that take awhile to appreciate.  It all matters.  Even the things we can't see yet.