That Space by Carolyn Chilton Casas Asleep with the senses awake— that liminal space between drowsiness and dreams where the energy takes me time and again. Minutes move slowly, life at a standstill, nowhere to be, nothing to do, only inhale and then gently exhale again. In a pocket of unknowingness from which creation springs, I let go of what I think I know, unlearning and looking again. Saying yes to uncertainty, trusting in the mercy of a guiding source— a wink of assurance that there’s still time left to get it right. Photograph by Elina-Sazonova Carolyn Chilton Casas lives on the central coast of California, the perfect landscape for a love of nature, hiking, and playing beach volleyball. She is a Reiki master and teacher, whose favorite theme for writing is about ways to heal. Her stories and poems have appeared in Braided Way , Energy, A Network for Grateful Living, Reiki News Magazine, Touch, and in other publications. You
Water Lettuce by Caroline Mellor The water lettuce has thick, spongy leaves and is covered in fine hairs. Its roots hang free so it is not anchored to the ground. (I know this because David Attenborough tells me so, his blue eyes twinkling like fresh water). I think of all the unmoored souls on the planet, cast adrift, roots severed or cut. Not anchored in place. Those who, like me, feel the loss of connection to ancestral home and wisdom, to themselves. The water lettuce has some remarkable adaptations, says David. Its free-floating roots mean it can travel. What a beautiful teaching, I thought, for anyone whose roots have been torn up, for anyone who finds family to be a place of wounding rather than of anchoring. To know that they can travel the flooded rivers and the great highways of life gathering all the minerals and nutrients they need from the water as they go; to know that, like the water lettuce, being rootless, they too have one more remarkable adaptation. Says Sir