21 Days of Turning Inward: Day Twenty

What are you ready to let go of?

What has happened this year that you are ready to burn away?

Some categories to consider: beliefs, events, attitudes, habits, memories, tendencies, people, ideals, judgments, objects, opinions...

Write it all out, tear it all up, and burn it away.

If you do not have a fire pit or wood stove, you can use a large earthenware bowl set onto the ground. As you watch the flames burn and the smoke rise up into the sky, allow yourself to shake off the dust of this year. (Have a pitcher of water ready, just in case....this has been an intense year and you may be creating quite a conflagration!)

The tender beginnings of a new year are germinating deep in the darkness; these ashes will fertilize the ground for its new growth.

Ordinary miracles of transformation are happening all around us. Let this ritual be a point of connection to the steady turn of the planet and the rebirth of spring.

Ordinary Miracle

I have mourned lost days

When I accomplished nothing of importance.

But not lately.

Lately under the lunar tide

Of a woman’s ocean, I work

My own sea-change:

Turning grains of sand to human eyes.

I daydream after breakfast

While the spirit of egg and toast

Knits together a length of bone

As fine as a wheatstalk.

Later, as I postpone weeding the garden

I will make two hands

That may tend a hundred gardens.

I need ten full moons exactly

For keeping the animal promise.

I offer myself up: unsaintly, but

Transmuted anyway

By the most ordinary miracle.

I am nothing in this world beyond the things one woman does.

But here are eyes that once were pearls.

And here is a second chance where there was none.

~Barbara Kingsolver