Today as I was getting out a vase to put the willows in, I found myself on the floor scraping off stickers from said vase. No, not the stickers indicating it’s fresh purchase. Those cheap stickers that are all papery and don’t peel off well at all. Half-hazardly stuck on by a small human mostly likely in the 3-year old suit. And there were like 8 stickers on this vase which in the moment felt like 489, and they were the same–some Christmas-themed puppy with a Santa hat on. And in that moment of peeling off stickers I felt so defeated. Damn, can’t something be easy? I just want the willows in water. In a vase. On my table. Can’t I just pull a vase out of my cabinet and be able to use it? Must it require scraping off some dumb sticker times a million? 
Apparently today, it must.
I have a friend that used the phrase: the magic is in the mundane. And we laugh about wiping asses in between heart felt conversations, and how the ordinary can feel so dang … ordinary. And yet, is it really? (I mean, I’ve never met anyone who was real stoked on wiping asses for years on end, but whatevs.)
Perhaps it’s all in the perspective: The sacredness of the simple. The hugeness of the ordinary.
I’m still learning what it all means. How it ebbs and flows and how to see the magic, the sacredness, the hugeness. That if I can see that as the banner, more so than the mundanity, the simplicity, the ordinary… perhaps it can help my perspective shift.
So as I sat on the floor, scraping stickers off this would-be willow holding vase, I thought about the magic in the mundane. I noticed how strong my fingernails were to be able to scrape. It’s true. I’ve been taking collagen because my skin was asking for it (as I near my 43rd trip around the flaming ball in the sky) but turns out my nails are benefitting too. I was able to scrape those stickers off so well. Yeah, thanks collagen!
I thought about my little people and their stickers and how they LOVE stickers and we talk all the time about “stickers go on paper!” and it makes me want to gouge my eyes out if I get to say it one more time. But but … I thought about my little people. They truly suck the life out of me and breathe it right back in. They empty my cup and fill it up again. Stupid stickers.
And I thought about the willows. Stomping in the creek, hearing my oldest ask the willow if she could have some of her branches. And gathering them all just so, and then making a willow twisty tie to bundle them together. Time in the outdoors, learning such a profound respect for Mama Nature and her gifts, feeling the sun on my body intermingling with the clouds that held the promise of rain, noticing snow on the local mountain peak…breathing it all in. This life. This simple, sacred, ordinary, huge, mundane, magical life.
In the middle of it, scraping off the stickers, it can feel so lacking. But I’m learning to find the sacred in the simple. Rooting down, rising up. All the time.
Rooting and Rising 