I wrote this piece in October of 2012. After I wrote it, I asked permission to use the image. I just now got it! The art is by Laura Wasylyshen and you can find her on Facebook. I am reposting it because the timing is so perfect. Here is the note:

Surrender is a great flowering. I now know the secret of life. It is found only when no one wants to know a secret but has become the secret. Out of that mystery the flowering shoots up tall, bends down low.

I cannot tell you how I have come to peace, only that I have. I took all of the templates across my knee and cracked them, one by one. Each pattern I had tried to impose on life had only made deeper grooves in my brain, made me fall into darker and darker pits of despair.

In total darkness I sat amidst the rubble. No human love wanted to approach me. I had no desire to be loved or love on my own terms. This was it.

Now what? Any door that would open would have to pull me in, embrace me deeply without any strings attached. And all I knew were strings.

My husband Bob had come and gone. I suddenly didn’t think it mattered. Nothing mattered but this new-found peace. There is no more story to tell. It has been given back to the earth. I suspect new roots are forming around old ones. One day there will be a massive upheaval of the elements. Perhaps then the flowering will be complete.

Don’t read anything into this story for it is only a random grouping of words and phrases. Google has taken over. Earth has been Googled, but is love something you can Google? I leave you with a laugh. Always keep ‘em laughing.

Vicki Woodyard