There are many things I enjoy about flying a kite: the time to think expansive sky thoughts and the time to simply let go of thought entirely; the simplicity of it—time, string, energy, resistance, direction; the fact that it happens most often in wide open places; the independent alive-ness of the kite—I have the string only to bring it home again; that in its search for air currents, its rising, darting, climbing, asking for more room to fly and spinning the reel of line, I have the sense that I can see the wind and I find that magnificent…unifying…I can be even more aware of my place within the forces of nature, and their physicality, surrounding me.

While wind-watching on Citadel Hill, I realized that I was also considering a recent conversation with a friend who had read a bit of Meister Eckhart to me.

Go completely out of yourself for God’s love, and God comes completely out of himself for love of you.  And when these two have gone out, what remains there is a simplified One.  In this One the Father brings his Son to birth in the innermost source.  Then the Holy Spirit blossoms forth, and then there springs up in God a will that belongs to the soul.  (Essential Sermons, p. 184)

It is a marvelous thing that something flows out yet remains within.  That a word flows out yet remains within is certainly marvelous.  That all creatures flow out yet remain within is a wonder.  (McGinn, ed., Teacher and Preacher, p. 192)

That all creatures flow out yet remain within…God comes completely out of God’s self for love of creation and I am called out of myself for love of God…and in that is the One. It is a beautiful thing to be expressly aware of that…the moment when there is neither ‘was’ nor ‘will be’ but ‘is’; when I feel like I can “see into the life of things” (Wordsworth) and that I am seen for all of who I am and it all fits into a Whole.

In the same conversation about Meister Eckhart, we spoke of “feathering into” autumn…how to have that happen well. What a beautiful image that is to me… of a feather settling into and becoming itself within/a part of a larger whole that makes space for exactly that feather…a whole that receives it without changing it, yet knowing that the Is has shifted into something larger, something more. I also liked all of the different images…a bird feather on air currents, ink feathering into fine paper, paper that feathers… The gentleness of it, soft edged…the memory of flight that stays with it…

Which led to this…

Feathering in

To feather-into:
a patch of colour
fitting within
a just so sized
whole that was waiting
ever so patiently.
Waiting to welcome
seamlessly, enlarging
the One of all, everything.

The One of all, everything,
stretching and breathing into;
and breath receiving in return,
becoming more
textured, faceted, reflective,
as the feather finds place
and hums her song softly,
remembering the blueness of sky
and telling the tale to creation now surrounding.

Kimberly M. King