Whenever I read or listen to something that has tremendous insight or connects to and changes my heart - it is like my heart goes "GOOOONG", like a low, bass tone vibrating through me. Then my skin feels a bit too small for my body, and I get goosebumps. Sometimes my head feels light, and there is this sudden urging inside to read every word as closely as possible - you know like a cat when it first hears the faint rustle of something, and the sudden undistractable eagerness and concentration that follows? Yeah. It's like that.
Other times it makes me bubble with bouncy colors right beneath my chest, somewhere on the inside.
Almost every time I want to post it everywhere, and make each word and sentence so mine that whenever someone reads it, they'll think "Hey, that's Margaretha right there!" I'll give you one example first, and then I promise I will post what I came here to post.
But first of all, I will tell you something about myself, and then something about this author.
I grew up as a part of the forest. Whenever I am abroad, some place inside of me there is a vast space of highlands and mountains, the smell of wet marshes and the icy winds in winter, the coolness of mountain lakes and the lazy, warm buzzing of rocks heated by the sun in the summer. Before I started school I knew the Norwegian and the Latin names for every flower in my hills, I collected herbs and dried them, and I learned from my mother what herbs and plants could be used as medicine.
Wherever I am I long for my highlands and my woods. At the same time I long for the busy, rustling noisiness of the city. I am always torn between the two.
I walk in the hills, or by the sea, and I can see the Unseeable that moves it all - I feel, with a radiant serene stillness, how my body is held by the Earth - how my breath is part of the breath of each Tree, how the sounds turn into One within me. These walks is more important than food for me. (Actually, I lied right there. I'll get in a terrible mood if not fed. Kind of like goats, you know.)
I also enjoy reading. Or more accuratly - I LOVE reading. And I love the English author Terry Pratchett. His books are so insightful and witty I read them over and over again. His spirit reminds me of the gentle, humorous spirit of a content Buddhist monk. This particular excerpt is from "A Hat Full Of Sky" where young Tiffany Aching sets out into the world to learn about witchery, and to save the world. Again. The first time she did it with a frying pan.
I'd recommend the Discworld (that's the series) books about the witches the most. Especially the ones about Tiffany and Granny Weatherwax.
To complete the first thought about words that resonance with me so much it's almost embarrassing, and that people go "Ha, Ha! That's you!" Here goes:
But because she was a teacher as well as a witch, and probably couldn't help herself, she added, "The funny thing is, of course, that officially there is no such thing as a white horse. They're called grey." *
* She had to say that, because she was a witch and a teacher and that's a terrible combination. They want things to be right. They want things to be correct. If you want to upset a witch you don't have to mess around with charms and spells, you just have to put her in a room with a picture that's hung slightly crooked and watch her squirm.
My husband laughed so hard when he read it, I almost felt it was it a bit too much.
Anyways.
This is why I posted this long post in the first place:
Thank you, said the voices of the hiver. What do we do now?
Tiffany looked up around her, and up at the stars. They werent' ones that she recognized.
'You die, I think,' she said.
But there is no 'me' to die, said the voices of the hiver. There is only us.
Tiffany took a deep breath. This was about words, and she knew about words.
'Here is a story to believe,' she said. 'Once we were blobs in the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats and then monkeys, and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand once had claws! In my human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and the chisel teeth of a cow! Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to live in! When we're frightened the hair on our skins stands up, just like it did when we had fur. We are history! Everything we've ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are.
Would you like the rest of the story?'
Tell us said the hiver.
'I'm made up of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the color of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is "me"?'
This, for me, is Oneness. This particular paragraph gives an eagle's view of the miracle of being a single individual made of all of us and everything. How I marvel at the quiet wonder of looking at my own hand and imagining the dinosaur and flower it once was and will be.
Blessings to you all.