Walking in the park across the street a few weeks ago, I found this ray of light, seeking something to illuminate. I felt fortunate to capture a moment of its play.
As I look around this spring, I see evidence everywhere of how life is shaped by forces both within and outside of its control. Life and death can be opportunistic, random, necessary, or tragic - like the white bones of two deer I found lying by the railroad track, linked vertebrae and a rib cage neat as erector sets, miraculous even in death. Spring bulbs wake readily to bloom--but it was the freezing sleep that prepared them. Robins arriving in February, tired from their long migration, must wait to eat until winter has finished its work. But when the earthworms rise, a spring rain sends them out onto the park path in search of dry land. They cover the walk like strewn pine needles, and I hopscotch my way around them, smiling. But later, I will see that many of them drowned, never making it back to the grass.
There is so much about our lives that seems unpredictable, and oddly, in this time of new life, it occurs to me just how equal and essential a part of life death is. Not just death, but endurance, struggle, patience, and surrender. All of it, all the faces of the circle, are part of one glorious whole. I have railed against the aspects of my life that I don't like for far too long. I can safely say, with what could be called wisdom if it weren't so obvious, that there is no peace in fighting. Our greatest experience of life, I think, is to embrace it completely. It is from here that we can genuinely enjoy the adventure.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
Old and new
A new season doesn't arrive without baggage, all shiny and undented. It grows from what went before. Spring is rife with a chaotic array of fresh and stale, broken and supple, bare truth and sweet promise.
The season's first task is to sort out the old and new, a frenzy of creative reorganization. Last year's frayed bird nests lie naked among the branches, secret havens reduced to bones. Shriveled fruits and bent limbs emerge from melting snow, along with the furry tips of new pussywillow buds. Nearby mountains still bear snowy peaks, but robins' evening songs ring clear.
The one thing that cannot be denied is life's progression. Regardless of trials, losses, dead ends, life's nature is to reach ahead again, to push upward – to find a new place to grow.
The season's first task is to sort out the old and new, a frenzy of creative reorganization. Last year's frayed bird nests lie naked among the branches, secret havens reduced to bones. Shriveled fruits and bent limbs emerge from melting snow, along with the furry tips of new pussywillow buds. Nearby mountains still bear snowy peaks, but robins' evening songs ring clear.
The one thing that cannot be denied is life's progression. Regardless of trials, losses, dead ends, life's nature is to reach ahead again, to push upward – to find a new place to grow.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
winter light III
March is a month of drama, as waking spring winds try to chase out the cold winter spirits. Sun, rain, snow, sun, wind, hail, sun, ice...the dance plays out. Part of me loves its fierceness and unpredictability.
March is a cusp time, a time of stirring and resettling. Newly arrived birds flap and chirp, sorting out nesting spots. Crocuses assert themselves through holdout patches of snow. Temperatures rise and fall like the wind, and life wakes up again, yawning and stretching and shrugging out the knots from its long stillness.
But I like to think that this infant season unfurls from a quiet seed of light, planted in the heart of winter. When all is still, turned in on itself, waiting, the light casts its deepest shadow, and the world dreams of its next waking.
March is a cusp time, a time of stirring and resettling. Newly arrived birds flap and chirp, sorting out nesting spots. Crocuses assert themselves through holdout patches of snow. Temperatures rise and fall like the wind, and life wakes up again, yawning and stretching and shrugging out the knots from its long stillness.
But I like to think that this infant season unfurls from a quiet seed of light, planted in the heart of winter. When all is still, turned in on itself, waiting, the light casts its deepest shadow, and the world dreams of its next waking.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
woods path
If there is one thing I've learned this year (although Heaven knows, there have been more than one), it's that each of us truly must walk our own path. And when we do not, something inside us will crackle and grate and claw for our attention until we are willing, or forced, or courageous enough to listen.
It's not that we necessarily know just where we're going. For me, it's more of a feeling, an inner sense of peace and authenticity, and for now I am continuing to search for it. But each path is also its own story, and every story has characters, each one contributing somehow to its development. And on this special day of beginnings, I choose to count my blessings by counting some of the essential characters in my story this year.
First, and at the beginning of everyone's story, are parents. From my father I learned how to be honest and responsible, how to work, how to drive, and how far over the speed limit I could go without getting pulled over. My mother taught me how to be healthy (my lunch always had wheat bread and apples), how to be kind to others, and how to love nature. And my sister is someone I admire for seeming always to have known who she is and what she cares about, and building her life around that.
But in the past couple of years, others have brought meaning to my life in their own ways: Rob, who came into my life to share joy, kindness and adventure, and who also had the task of showing me where my heart still needed to open; Julie, whose bottomless and wise compassion I am forever grateful for; Nick, who believed in me and saw the best in me; Dorothy, whose willingness to help others seemingly knows no bounds; Michelle, who inadvertently got me on a roller coaster for the first time in twenty years; Eric, who reached me again out of the blue and who will always be a friend; Jane, whose love of plants made a greenhouse beautiful and a difficult summer easier; Jerry, who is a good soul from the inside out; Berta, Marina and Geoffrey, the team of healers who are helping to resculpt me through a time of transition into the person I am really here to become; Eileen, whose name means "Light" and who lives up to it; and others who are important and appreciated.
This may sound like an acceptance speech--but in fact, it is. I accept the lessons, the love and the living that all the characters of my life have brought me. And I wish each of them, and all the other adventurers on this storm-tossed Earth, happy, fulfilled lives and awakened hearts.
Namaste
It's not that we necessarily know just where we're going. For me, it's more of a feeling, an inner sense of peace and authenticity, and for now I am continuing to search for it. But each path is also its own story, and every story has characters, each one contributing somehow to its development. And on this special day of beginnings, I choose to count my blessings by counting some of the essential characters in my story this year.
First, and at the beginning of everyone's story, are parents. From my father I learned how to be honest and responsible, how to work, how to drive, and how far over the speed limit I could go without getting pulled over. My mother taught me how to be healthy (my lunch always had wheat bread and apples), how to be kind to others, and how to love nature. And my sister is someone I admire for seeming always to have known who she is and what she cares about, and building her life around that.
But in the past couple of years, others have brought meaning to my life in their own ways: Rob, who came into my life to share joy, kindness and adventure, and who also had the task of showing me where my heart still needed to open; Julie, whose bottomless and wise compassion I am forever grateful for; Nick, who believed in me and saw the best in me; Dorothy, whose willingness to help others seemingly knows no bounds; Michelle, who inadvertently got me on a roller coaster for the first time in twenty years; Eric, who reached me again out of the blue and who will always be a friend; Jane, whose love of plants made a greenhouse beautiful and a difficult summer easier; Jerry, who is a good soul from the inside out; Berta, Marina and Geoffrey, the team of healers who are helping to resculpt me through a time of transition into the person I am really here to become; Eileen, whose name means "Light" and who lives up to it; and others who are important and appreciated.
This may sound like an acceptance speech--but in fact, it is. I accept the lessons, the love and the living that all the characters of my life have brought me. And I wish each of them, and all the other adventurers on this storm-tossed Earth, happy, fulfilled lives and awakened hearts.
Namaste
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
St. Regis Lake detail
It's a tricky thing, sometimes, to know how closely to look at something. Objects, views, thoughts, experiences, people--anything. If I don't look closely enough, really become aware of what it is made of, I may live too superficially without any real understanding, or miss an opportunity or an insight. But if I look too closely, or for too long, I can get lost in an infinite number of details and forget the context or lose perspective.
In fact, sometimes I think I don't even have a perspective, because I am in a constant flux of different levels of focus, and never know exactly which one to stop at. From the hyper-broad to the absolutely minutial, I can do it all. But I think, in the end, the most appealing, and productive, goal is simply to be able to see everything just for what it is, and let it be.
In fact, sometimes I think I don't even have a perspective, because I am in a constant flux of different levels of focus, and never know exactly which one to stop at. From the hyper-broad to the absolutely minutial, I can do it all. But I think, in the end, the most appealing, and productive, goal is simply to be able to see everything just for what it is, and let it be.
Monday, June 23, 2008
pink tulip
If it is possible to be solitary in a world full of people, things, noise, events, distractions; in a world where, in truth, everything and everyone is connected; then I have been. Aloneness has been a defining quality of my life, perhaps the dominant experience of it. With people or without, at work or at home, traveling or resting, in relationship or single--always I am alone inside. And in the end, at our core, we all are. When the chaos or stimulation abates and the ceaseless attempts to fill the void become still, I am ultimately alone with my choices, my feelings, the consequences of my actions, my future, myself.
I have fought it, but in the end I think the fighting made the experience stronger. I even believed, for most of my adult years, that I wanted to be alone. But I know now that I don't--I was just protecting myself. But trying to fill an empty space in one's heart with activity, distraction, or even with other people is not the path to communion. Embracing the aloneness that seems so frightening leads, in the end, to the ability to love genuinely, to share oneself without selling oneself, to give without attachment, and to trust in the goodness that may come, wherever it may come from.
I have fought it, but in the end I think the fighting made the experience stronger. I even believed, for most of my adult years, that I wanted to be alone. But I know now that I don't--I was just protecting myself. But trying to fill an empty space in one's heart with activity, distraction, or even with other people is not the path to communion. Embracing the aloneness that seems so frightening leads, in the end, to the ability to love genuinely, to share oneself without selling oneself, to give without attachment, and to trust in the goodness that may come, wherever it may come from.
Friday, April 25, 2008
The art of letting go
Oak leaves, it seems, adhere steadfastly to their branches until the new growth forces them off in the spring. Hmmm, that sounds familiar. I've been forced to budge more than a few times myself, clinging to the "safe" well beyond the time for new budding.
Of course, trees don't have fears or emotional vulnerabilities or skills at self-sabotage. They don't complain or procrastinate, or create myriad reasons in their thick-barked minds as to why they're better off staying where they are. The beauty of trees is that they simply are, and they do what comes naturally and what makes sense for them, and what will support their future health.
Humans, on the other hand, are much more complicated. Not only do we have thoughts to tangle ourselves up in at will, the moment we stop being conscious of them; we have insecurities, false beliefs, and many, many choices we're responsible for making. We have the terrifying option of free will. We have mobility, intelligence, the internet, and the need for an income. We can have pets, have children, have neither. We can go to school or go to work--or not. We can change our hair color or our fashion. We can be religious or agnostic, kind or cruel, irresponsible or conscientious, Democrat or Republican. So many choices...
Of course, most of us don't think about all these choices. We just stumble on into life and let things happen, or assume what we do next must be what we want. Sometimes it is, sometimes it turns out it isn't. By the way, we also have the power to make new choices--but we must bear the consequences of the ones we've already made.
In the end, it is probably only the thinkers, or over-thinkers like myself, who notice and become somewhat immobilized in the face of all this freedom. More than once, I have actually wanted to be a tree--to have a simpler life on the side of a quiet mountain, listening to the soft music of wind, watching the seasonal life cycles of squirrels and deer around me, hosting a bird family or two, and just being at peace.
But my job here, my responsibility, is to find peace in my own life. To not be afraid of my freedom, or overwhelmed by it, or lulled into having or being less than I want by the false seduction of unworthiness. My job is to let go of, to surrender, the clutter of false feelings and doubts and thoughts that exist presumably to keep me safe, but that in reality keep me captive. My job is to live.
So, by God, let's do it.
Of course, trees don't have fears or emotional vulnerabilities or skills at self-sabotage. They don't complain or procrastinate, or create myriad reasons in their thick-barked minds as to why they're better off staying where they are. The beauty of trees is that they simply are, and they do what comes naturally and what makes sense for them, and what will support their future health.
Humans, on the other hand, are much more complicated. Not only do we have thoughts to tangle ourselves up in at will, the moment we stop being conscious of them; we have insecurities, false beliefs, and many, many choices we're responsible for making. We have the terrifying option of free will. We have mobility, intelligence, the internet, and the need for an income. We can have pets, have children, have neither. We can go to school or go to work--or not. We can change our hair color or our fashion. We can be religious or agnostic, kind or cruel, irresponsible or conscientious, Democrat or Republican. So many choices...
Of course, most of us don't think about all these choices. We just stumble on into life and let things happen, or assume what we do next must be what we want. Sometimes it is, sometimes it turns out it isn't. By the way, we also have the power to make new choices--but we must bear the consequences of the ones we've already made.
In the end, it is probably only the thinkers, or over-thinkers like myself, who notice and become somewhat immobilized in the face of all this freedom. More than once, I have actually wanted to be a tree--to have a simpler life on the side of a quiet mountain, listening to the soft music of wind, watching the seasonal life cycles of squirrels and deer around me, hosting a bird family or two, and just being at peace.
But my job here, my responsibility, is to find peace in my own life. To not be afraid of my freedom, or overwhelmed by it, or lulled into having or being less than I want by the false seduction of unworthiness. My job is to let go of, to surrender, the clutter of false feelings and doubts and thoughts that exist presumably to keep me safe, but that in reality keep me captive. My job is to live.
So, by God, let's do it.
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