This big old lake that I find myself perched beside has been midwife throughout my life.

Lake Superior has sung her song and it has woven its way through generations of my people.  She sings to me as I near the end of my renewal leave.

My parents were both raised on her shore.   They grew and made life and play and meaning with her constant presence lending wisdom and a sense of awe impossible to dodge if souls are open to hear.  My kin are buried in soil watered by her presence.  I nearly met my own death along her shore thirty years ago when meeting a semi truck head on.  My children were raised with her breath in their being.  And now I am here.  A woman stepping into rebirth, seeking to knit the learnings of my life into celebration of that which is ongoing, eternal, and so much more given to delight than the deadly serious grind so often made of life.   And She is singing her song as the moon and sun echo their response.

Mostly I am moved by her eternal witness to the rhythms and power of life.  There is borning and dying always.  There is wonder available and offered to us always.  There is a force larger than our own fears and she sings her song if we will but stop long enough to open the ears of our heart to it.

These things I savor as I strap on my skis.  Entering the forest after a big snow is entering into holy ground.  And I am on it, in it, and of it.  Midwifed into the life uniquely mine to enflesh.