I recently spent quite a bit of time in the African wilderness. I’m left feeling touched by that wildness, the liberation and the rootedness where the deep primal humaness intersects the mysterious untouchable void of the spiritual. It is raw here, free and uneasy in an awkward beautiful kind of way.

For so long I pushed away from the primal as a result of the Texas Christian roots in me thinking that all the fleshy stuff is bad, sinful and to be left to the shadows. As a result I spent the past 15 years predominantly flexing my spiritual muscles and casting off much of the body. Until recently…the past year or so…I have been challenged to intermingle, to play in the space where flesh and spirit are united. It’s beautiful here. It is also very conflicting, but real, true and much of me believes even divine. For God created both flesh and spirit and I am starting to realize both should be celebrated.   

    
 I sense great clarity around this belief when in the African wilderness. The wilderness is both…a fumbling of free forming conflicting growth pushing it’s way through rock and soil while at the same time elegant, fluid and harmonious. I also see this while out with the Maasai. They are so tightly bound to the wilderness. They are a very raw, natural and beauiful people with traditions many would say are primal, out dated and archaic. However, at a closer look they are in rhythm with one another, with their need for the earth, for God and a patience to let nature move as it wills.

   
   
I am amazed at how we can grow as people. How we can progress, yet move backwards…move backwards, yet progress. Taking it all in and finding the rhythm.

Big love,

Z