Rhubarb psychic goo

Hello Friends,

The popular advice to feel your feelings and emotions needs to be employed with a steady wisdom. It is easy to get the impression that you should endeavor to feel everything that is arising.

Sometimes, often perhaps, it is an act of great Self-Love and maturity to pack feelings and emotions away for another time, a time when there is enough bandwidth or presence within to be with the pain and rawness.

Knowing when you are ready to be with something, and acting upon that wisdom serves to grow your container, and over time you will be able to go into more and more of the 'places that scare you'.

Have you ever seen the inside of a rhubarb root system? They are composed of bizarre, twisting brittle wood that winds in upon itself, creating pockets of slimy black goo. The first time I dug up one of these roots I was 24, working on a vegetable farm in southern Pennsylvania. A crew of us had been tasked with revitalizing a field of rhubarb by taking root cuttings and transplanting them up in a field on the hillside. I had never seen a rhubarb root, and was mesmerized by their strangeness.

What was this life they lived? Year after year, the roots entwining and swirling through the dank river bottom soil of Northern Appalachia in ecstatic, measured slowness.

How were these pocket of goo formed? Did the roots double back on themselves, entrapping bits of their own bodies to decompose and liquefy with the seasons? Were they encapsulating choice handfuls of soil, knowing deep in their ancient plant arcana to further decompose a particular clump of organic matter? How long does this goo need to ferment? Does is provide the perfect rhubarb health elixir in the crystalline soil of winter?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but their mysterious workings have stayed with me. Perhaps there are times we need to build up black goo within our psychic roots, to be released at the moment we need its nourishment the most. Perhaps we fold back into ourselves when we cannot handle the rawness of the surrounding material, and a season (or 20) is needed before it is digested enough to be palatable.

Whatever the answer, I trust Rhubarb. Something wonderful is at work there, something that can teach those who will listen and muse.



I write this, for someone may need it today, and be helped.

Let us be so tender and kind with each other and ourselves, and when we cannot, may we be so tender and kind with that. It is as it should be.

My love to you today, Evangeline