Engaging with Life

Michelle Vesser helps people on their journeys, engaging with life in such a nourishing way. She’s a wise woman of the woods who I have always experienced as truly willing to wade into the deepest waters of consciousness. 

Michelle has spent her life cultivating a relationship tending the landscapes both inside of us and all around. She’s helped others to  garden for several decades at the OAEC (or Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Western Sonoma County) as one of their leaders of their extensive and impressive permaculture gardens. 

And she also has been a lighthouse along the stormy seas for many a wayfaring sailor engaging with the oceanic vastness of our innermost emotional waves. We met years ago at a workshop, and have continued to run into each other around Northern California’s gatherings ever since. 

When I arrived, Michelle walked me through the garden to our podcast perch. We sipped on Lemon Verbena and nettle tea while we caught up on the spaces since we had last dropped in together. After recording the podcast, we took a walk to a redwood grove behind her home to record a meditation video to supplement the audio that we had created together. A single white trillium greeted us along the path. 

To watch and listen to the sounds of Michelle’s words on a windy day in the woods, you can visit my YouTube channel. You can also read the words to the poem that Michelle read on the podcast episode below.

Poem “Offering” by Barry Vesser

(written to honor his wife Michelle)

“This journey seems long

In human years.

The coming to blood, 

The clumsy courting of life,

The feeling your fullness

And the depth of despair. 

The discovery of fear and love

In your heart.

Once you started down 

this meandering thread of a 

path toward yourself, the resources for 

the journey began 

to appear as if by magic.

Too often you felt silenced. 

The stone in your throat

Strangled and garbled your words.

The weight of a male driven culture

Paving over

Farmland, putting up shopping malls

Where there had been

Orange and lemon trees

Drove you inward.

You do not belong 

You are not enough,

We do not want

your knowledge, 

The voices chanted.

In the bottom of 

that dry well you 

almost disappeared.

But you took your fear and anger 

And made a maroon cloak from them, 

And traveled into the dark

At times crawling on your hands

And knees removing the sharp

Stone from your path.

Then the darkness spoke to you

Its song bigger than silence.

And you listened with your whole,

Raw being trembling

You had to let go of so much,

Everything,

To make you light

enough for this journey.

You met strong women there,

Generous crones who shared 

Their life wisdom and offered

Love, patience, tools, and perspective.

Each showed in their own way 

Your connection to the mother,

The luminous source that breathes us all

And encouraged you to choose yourself

And I have been given the gift

Of witnessing this transformation.

I see: you before the mirror

Delighting in every grey hair

That wiggles through, like a little girl

Who can’t wait for her birthday.

I see: the girl who could not speak

Presiding over your fifth wedding.

Or teaching in the garden, at the head

Of a huge wooden table full of people

Connecting food, spirit and the earth 

Restoring that ancient relationship; 

Or playfully sharing cherry tomatoes

With the garden apprentices

After a long, hot harvest day;

Or with your dirty knees flashing 

Through the holes in your pants as 

You tenderly heal plants into 

The soil in the fading light.

I see: you with a young woman,

Or a young man, holding their tender wounds,

The scars from the casual cruelties we inflict 

On one another, and watering their vitality

Your reassuring laughter never far away.

You look into their dark places and like

A soothsayer offer them reflection and comfort. 

You have stitched this journey

Together like a quilt, full of your 

And other’s creative love and color. 

May it warm you in those early

Morning meditations as 

You lean into what is next.

Now, things are dropping away

Although nothing essential is lost

As if pieces of marble

Were falling off

The sculpture hidden within

Freeing and opening a you

That is part of this ancient river

You have settled into yourself

Offering your presence

Like a field full of space and light

Or a lake reflecting the sky from its depths

Or the universe unfolding its beauty

And looking over its shoulder 

At itself.”

Contact Michelle

Her website: www.everythingsacred.co

Her email: michelle@everythingsacred.co

Wild Wisdom: www.wearewildwisdom.com