ndian-Village-Adirondacks-Painting-by-Winslow-Homer

Minerva has been still and silent. She has stood mute these past months in her dark quiet garage, while the lake froze, plants died, and Persephone journeyed down into the underworld. The Minervas; metal and zoetic, have been in hibernation of a most useful variety. Now it’s time to converse with mortality and investigate the inevitability of rebirth. There are tasks to be completed here. It’s time to get busy, time to gather up those soul pieces and bits of self left laying around the fields and forests of my childhood.

We sprung Minerva out of her fancy RV accommodations on the 7^th day of April and she thanked us for the winter comfort by starting right up. She was holding the same air from October, strange thing; we went out and came back in the same atmosphere. It snowed that night, and the one after. We laughed at our foolishness of flip-flops and searched for socks.

Appropriate motor home respites are appropriately closed here until the threat of freeze and guarantee of snowless camping returns. Minerva has yet to clear her internal cavities of the pink elixir that makes it possible for her to survive in this climate. She is out of the garage, but operating “without services.” We have been reminded that life for man, woman, and dogs, can be indeed very simple. We need to be warm, we need eat and we need to eliminate. The order of importance changes with the weather and the time of day. Spiritual enlightenment appears to take a backseat ala Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and yet I am always brushing shoulders with she who created this story.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWinslow_Homer_-_North_Woods_Club%2C_Adirondacks_(The_Interrupted_Tete-a-Tete).jpg

 Lest you imagine an isolated off-road campsite at the icy edge of a granite cliff, sporting a plucky Minerva going “self contained”, not so. We have three wheels on blacktop, watching life unfold in a suburban community. We are indeed parked amidst the tall white pines and leafless oaks at the edge of the Adirondacks. This edge is also the driveway of open hearted family and their Ark-like home with actual working plumbing. School buses and garbage trucks, spring garden clean-up and curious neighbors, all staples of our past lives are just outside our nifty dinette slide out.

We are in search of a home, here where home was, a long time ago. This quest calls for senses more ancient and finely tuned than can exist in one lifetime. The work of the soul is best done under dark rich dirt too deep for cold. It is the timeless place where our Mother’s heart beats out the rhythm of the waves and wind. It is the place we remember who we are and who we have always been. That is the quest. This is the place.

Blessings on those who have wondered about Minerva’s whereabouts. Words have not been the chosen medium. Minerva is in a right brain free fall, a Zen-esque “how close to the bone can you go and not bleed to death?” The Koan for this month is

Where is Home? It is nowhere but here.

Koan – Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster …http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/koan : a paradox to be meditated upon that is used to train Zen Buddhist monks to abandon ultimate dependence on reason and to force them into gaining sudden intuitive enlightenment