It All Starts Small

10.29.15


These most recent weeks have been more potent than we might've realized as we've gone about our business.

Each modest task, care-filled cleanup, habit-forming repetition… each small step in a certain direction, a seed planted in this ground we now stand on, later to mature into a fuller-grown testament to what we've been doing.

There is nothing abstract or fantastical about what I'm saying here: This description fits the edicts of common sense. We make one move after another, foot following foot, a line of writing or column of data begetting the next… and by simple arithmetic, they add up, to an increasing amount. A series of reiterations creates a pattern. A well-ordered pattern of bricks frames a foundation. A neatly-built foundation supports continued growth. But it all, by necessity, starts small.

I honor the union of Venus and Mars, exact this coming Monday (Nov 2) though having swelled with ever-more-pregnant possibility during these last weeks they've both been in Virgo. A conjunction between this planetary pair is the ultimate fusion of yin and yang, rest and effort, vessel and spear, receptive and projective energies which need each other's existence to define their own by the contrast. When together, they sire a concentration of life-force, a synthesis of contrary functions now fitting prong-in-groove as one; a birth.

What? You didn't notice that swollen midsection throbbing with its labored contractions? Perhaps you were too occupied with breathing in and breathing out, counting one beat at a time to keep yourself calm. Besides, the sign here is Virgo. And Virgo shuns the dramatics. It busies itself with something constructive… purposeful, material, real. Heroically talking up the bright future of a still-fledgling sprout seems premature and pointlessly self-congratulatory. It's too soon to celebrate at this early stage of new life, when there are scheduled feedings and diaper-changes and moment-to-moment needs-for-care to attend to. Work now; fete a better-developed version of this spawn later, at some future birthday-party.

During these weeks, we've already had to check the map and confirm our plotted path. Is this where we want to be going? Good. Let's hop to it then. Life's too short to waste on meandering aimlessly, following roads that lead nowhere, or quadruple-checking the preparations when it's impossible to prepare for everything.

We've also needed to confirm that our rational plan is appropriately aligned with our heartsong. We mustn't proceed by cold calculation, ignoring an unmistakable calling or emotional pull just because it 'doesn't make sense'. But neither can we be naively blind to pressing practicalities, believing too totally in our saintly ideals while bills go unpaid, tummies hungry, health concerns unaddressed.

And then we've absorbed ourselves in the details, rightfully understanding the incremental progress being made—at times nearly invisible to the naked eye, though indeed occurring nonetheless—each time one more bit of business is handled.

This has been the recent path of Mars and Venus… first squaring Saturn in Sagittarius, then opposing Neptune in Pisces, and finally conjoining Jupiter in Virgo, completing their circuit through the mutable T-square. Venus moves into Libra on Nov 8, followed shortly thereafter by Mars on Nov 12.

I brought no advice to dispense or red-flag to wave when I showed up at my writing desk today. There will be more future-focused heads-ups at other times, when my muse is struck by a forthcoming astrological climate-system. I did not know in advance what I wanted to write, where this piece would be head, what it would develop into… only that I had to write, to hail this moment's marriage of Venus and Mars, to keep up my practice, to trust in my practice, to glorify the present, to propagate one more artist-seed. Here is what I did.