ravishing

Yesterday, we walked the perimeter of this small lake, about a 3 mile walk on water, a miracle by some accounts. Sixteen inches of ice makes all things possible when it comes to waterwalking. At places the ice was brushed bare by the wind, the walking slick, at others it was piled up to six inches, more of a trudge.

The true miracle, thought, lay in the landscape surrounding the lake. A fire ravaged this area, burning 75,000 acres, in the spring of 2007. It was an exceptionally dry spring that year, with both strong and gusty winds, and piles of dry tinder- from an epic blowdown, a dericho, that had leveled a 500,000 acre, 40 mile long, 10 mile wide swath of mature pine forest 5 years prior- piled up like pick-up sticks several feet deep, complete with air pockets as you might construct when building a good campfire. Prime conditions for a tiny spark from a strike of flint to set things ablaze.

Which it did.

There is a heartbreaking story about a 64 year old solo camper, Steve Posniak, a gentle soul who came to his beloved lakes and creeks each spring as soon as the ice went out in search of solitude and moose. The story is that he found a large fire burning behind his campsite that morning, and tried to put it out with his cookpot before escaping what quickly became an inferno, fire blazing on both sides of the portage trail he traversed as he made his 90 minute journey to safety. It seems likely that a spark of some sort from his own morning fire flew into the treetops, or an ember was fanned by the wind, unbeknownst to him. His campsite was the epicenter of the blaze.

Heartbroken, exhausted, afraid, he at first denied having camped there when questioned, stating that he had paddled past the site that morning and noted the fire. The next day he acknowledged the truth. Later he would be charged with the felony of ‘willfully’ setting timber afire, along with several misdemeanors. Eighteen months after that, on the eve of his trial, he would commit suicide.

One local resident, the then owner of the lodge and outfitter at which we are staying, where the fire ravaged the landscape up to their mailbox (her property was saved by sprinkler systems installed on lakeside properties here and by the diligence of a community of volunteers and fire fighters) states that this gentle man was the only fatality of the fire that day. Of course, I am certain not all were as gracious (thus, the government’s charge), but at least from this vantage point, 16 years later, I read grace and sympathy from the local community for this man. (see this link for more of the story ). As one who also finds deep belonging, healing, and profound presence in Place, my heart also breaks for this man.

So, one of the miracles that fills my heart with wonder here in the story of this Place is the upwelling of mercy and grace. as well as the growth and perhaps regrowth of Love amongst and between the persons who live and love in this remote dispersed community. The accounts from that week of support and friendship, even amongst ‘competitors’, are poignant. Of course, we are at our best, for some paradoxical reason during times such as this, when we remember Who we are. Stripped of the false value system that is laid upon our humanity to separate us, we remember we are One, here to love. I think of Dorothy Day, who as 9 year old girl, witnessing the outpouring of love in her community during the great SanFrancisco earthquake of 1906, asked the question, ‘why can’t we love each other this way all the time’.

The second miracle that filled my heart on our walk was witnessing the wonder of the natural world. I wanted to type ‘resilence’ here, but that is to suggest that what it endured is something beyond what is natural, perhaps. Instead it is the wonder of the cycles of creative destruction, an oxymoron that awakens our heart to remember what feels like an impossible concept to our fearfully small minds. What we want to judge and label as tragedy, as loss, as desecration is instead full of hope, birth, beauty. It feels like a sacred story, which we have forgotten.

Take this excerpt, written 12 years ago

Four years after the fire, the Boundary Waters boreal forest is regenerating. Part of the natural cycle in the region, fires are needed to reseed native trees such as jack pine, whose seed cones burst open only when exposed to intense heat. Signs of renewal were evident just months after the fire. In July 2008 one enthusiastic naturalist posted a description online of the beautiful deep-green carpet on the forest’s fertile floor, enriched by the ash and nurtured by additional sunlight. Another posted a picture of a bull moose standing in tall, glowing green grass amid a few blackened tree stumps. Although the landscape had changed dramatically, nature’s process of rebirth had begun anew, with hope for a verdant future—one that Steve Posniak would be glad to see. – https://archive.dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/article/2011/11/01/burned

Today, that growth is noted on the landscape as we walk the perimeter, passing by hillsides untouched by the fire 16 years ago, then alongside the scarred ones where the fire raged. (again, the term ‘rage’ here, assuming an angry touch over a benevolent one? Earlier in this essay, I at first mistakenly inserted the word ‘ravished’ when I wanted ‘ravaged’. Now, I wonder– might the word ravish be more accurate, as something was indeed ‘carried off by force’ and at the same time filled the barren remains with delight and joy) In the seasonal barrenness of winter, the burned areas still appear more desolate, much more so than with the flush of perennial growths and deciduous plants of the other seasons, but even here and now, there are colonies of jack pine (a fire-dependent tree in the boreal forest) 20 feet tall. Communities of red pine, equal in size, are also moving in. And the ever present birch (or perhaps they are aspen or poplar, as all of these trees have light colored bark, particularly when they are young saplings regenerating the landscape. I’ve read that this protects them from scalding during the freeze/thaw cycle of spring… oh, the small miracles are endless, if you only have eyes to see).

I love this place we call home. This place that offers its bounty, its blessings, its lessons, its hope. This place of which I am also a part— no visitor, not separate from, the earth is not a ‘thing’ upon which we live and move and have our being, nor one WITH which we abide, but which we also ARE.

We are wildness. We are hope. We are ‘destruction’ and we are ravishing. We are regenerative hope. We are beauty in the desecration. We are nourishment in the ashes. We are love. Grief is but one moment before it is transformed into something new, if we can let go of judgment, allow for forgiveness, for grace, for joy, and for Love to abide.

energy

Yesterday, we drove the hour to town, down the windy, plowed but still snow-packed 2 lane road, in search of some relief, in the form of medicine for Don’s stuffed head. I’d had an energy-zapping cold for the week leading up to our trip, and as a matter of course when two live as one, Don’s symptoms hit him full force on Thursday, the day we arrived here. I’d intended to replenish the supply of nasal decongestant at the drugstore in Chicago, where we’d picked up a left-behind prescription for Don, but alas had forgotten to do so.

And so we found ourselves in Grand Marais, in search of relief. (where OTC nasal spray would have to do, since the only pharmacy in town is inside the mountain clinic, which is closed on Saturdays) I wasn’t thrilled to be leaving our secluded little cabin, but I wanted my partner to feel more comfortable. Sleep (and single-digit, dry winter air, evidently) had been his only respite the day before.

Situated along the north shore of Lake Superior, Grand Marais is a harbor town protected from the onslaught of wind-driven waves from the Big Sea by an outcrop of lava extruded barrier rocks and the subsequent deposit of lake conveyed gravel that connects those barrier rocks to the mainland. According to city data, the town is about 3 square miles with a population of 1300 people, isolated in its own way, as the next significant community is Duluth, another 2-hour drive to the west, along the north shore (or driving east, Thunder Bay, Ontario, also along the north shore). An arts colony and folk-art school thrive on the tourism of folks drawn to the natural beauty and remoteness of the area, to the water and wilderness, in which it is enfolded, and the town appears to thrive on the shops, galleries, and restaurants housed in the century-old shanty-like buildings that line its square. The town, at least in the off-season, has a warm welcoming energy.

After procuring the nasal spray at a convenience store, we made our way out to the barrier rocks , locally referred to as artist’s point, due to the draw of its natural beauty. Yesterday, it was full of energy– not of hoards of tourists, there were just a handful of us out there meandering the windswept trails to rocky outcrops. We were grateful that we had grabbed our winter snowshoeing gear before leaving the cabin this morning, as every stitch of wool, insulated pants, parka, mitts and balaclava was a blanket of warmth in the ferociously cold blasts coming off of the lake.

That energy washed into and through me- the wildness of it, the intensity of it, the aliveness of it. I breathed it into my spirit, receiving it like the Ruah of the divine, and it enlivened something in me. An amazement and a peace, at once, power and presence –a presence to the energy of Life itself, which took me out of my self and into the Other.

Those waters will reclaim whatever they touch as theirs.

There was the sound of the wind – rushing and whistling and roaring–and the feel of it, along with the spray from the crashing waves, on the bit of exposed flesh on my face. And I am certain a smell- wet rocks and alpine soil-which I noted subconsciously if not intentionally so, a smell that would bring me back to that remembrance in a beat of my heart were I to note it again. And I was there, alive in the goodness of this human body to receive it.

This morning, it is quiet again in the cabin. Outside the window, flurries fly over the still, frozen lake. Currently, a white out obscures the far shore while closeby the flakes swirl against the backdrop of winter spruce and birch. There is a grace to the falling, up close, a softness, a release as deep as a slow breath…

Waiting within

Blustery cold out there, my view of the lake from the window satisfies, for now. Billows of snow, lifted by gusts, roll across the frozen lake, while in the sky above, also blustered, the heavy bank of snow-white clouds rolls along. Patches of brilliant blue appear and disappear; likewise does the sun. Shadow and light, black and white, in this landscape of waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting for the season to change. Trusting that it will, as always, bring buds and blossoms and fruit. Color.

Later, we walked to the water’s edge, where a lonely bench waits. For someone to sit, to breathe, to watch, to ponder, to be still. Its emptiness speaks to me, as does its patience, its holding place, its watching-for, in stead.

The weather is harsh on the edge, gusts blowing bitter cold wind in our faces. We turn inland, walk the lane that follows the river, past the grey skeletons of pines that were scorched by the fires 15 years ago, still bearing witness.

The river is flowing, tufts of snow cushion the bony spots. The beaver dam also blanketed in snow, beyond which the pond is still, frozen, a white expanse surrounding the lodge. A few fresh sitcks atop the mound of snow, makes me wonder when they were out. Today, they wait, too. Within the shelter they have built, taking nourishment from the stash gathered last season, from the rich offerings of earth.

As do I. So much nurture within to sustain from all that has been.

• 

• 

• 

This morning, the wind is persistent, gusting and relentless. The woodstove, a hot mug of coffee, the view from the window, bring comfort. There is stillness within. Quiet.

I am breathing. Deeply.

Waiting? Or simply here.

Here is enough.

North Star

Yesterday, I did a thing. I responded to an invitation to take a day of retreat, of sorts, virtually, with other like-minded/bodied/spirited people around the world. The event was named as a Mindful Marathon, in which each of us, in our own hometown was to map out a 2 mile loop (or, as I chose, a 1-mile loop if a half-marathon distance seemed the fitting choice for you). Throughout the 13 hours of the (half)marathon day itself, we were then to walk or run that loop at the top of each hour. Upon returning to our home base after each loop, there awaited us a journaling practice, with hourly prompts, to complete. The creator of the program stated that he believed many folks, who pushed their bodies in extreme physical pursuits such as climbing high or sheer peaks, running marathons, (and I might add certain ascetic spiritual practices— days long sitting meditations, extended fasts) are seeking transformative experiences, but too often at the expense of the welfare and care their physical bodies. So, this was designed to be challenging, yes, but not punishing. (in fact, the admonition was to be slow, also to stop or skip, at any time that you felt pain… in other words to listening deeply and compassionately to your body).

As for the journal prompts, the invitation here was to not-overthink, but to dump onto the page without judgment or censor (and honestly the format didn’t allow for much time to over-think. My mile took me 20 minutes to walk, plus putting on/taking off shoes, coat, hat, glove, eating something, which left me less than 30 minutes for the journaling) Certainly, as the day wore on, and some fatigue began to set in, the ability to censor what was coming out was even less. Turns out there was alot buried beneath my normal day-to-day effort to manage it – to keep it all inside. No wonder I’ve been tired.

Fatigue, however, is something that has been with me over the past 12 months. I’ve noted it as a strange sense of being unable to be entirely present, to pull myself out of the fog, combined with an irritability and need to withdraw. At times, it has felt like old trauma dissociation response though I couldn’t quite understand it completely.

It was the loop 4 prompt, North Star, that hinted at the source of my fatigue. Loop one had me looking back in a sweeping manner upon my life, naming and labeling its peaks and valleys (here it was interesting for me to note the oft relationship between the two). The focus of loop 2 explored the need for and presence of art in my life, for expressive, connective, and imaginative purposes. In loop 3 we were invited to ponder the seasons of our life, what seasons may have passed for us, ones yet to come, and the wisdoms they might gift to us. Perhaps these primed the pump in some way, but still I was surprised at how quickly my responses to prompt 4 came spilling out upon the page.

The invitation in this prompt was to look back at just the past 12 months, and to record the emotions you regularly experienced on the lines surrounding a circle, then to summarize them in some way with one word, to be placed at the center. For better or worse, this then is my ’emotional north star’

(The quote used as the epigraph for this chapter is by Plato- ‘All our emotive states, such as wrath, fear, longing, mourning, love, jealousy, or envy, contain a portion of their opposite’)

As you can see from the words that spilled out, my north star is a bit dark right now. Fear. Worry. Pain. Anxiety. Sadness. Grief. Loss. Anger. Resentment. Longing. Loneliness. Emptiness. Peace. Fatigue. Disappointment. Beauty. That’s a lot to carry. No wonder I’ve been tired. I suspect that my fatigue has had a lot more to do with the energy drain of that sorrow, along with the attempt to suppress it, diminish it, or ignore it, cover it over, or outrun it than it does anything physical at all. We are indeed mind/bodies, after all.

Of note for me was that the words Peace and Beauty spilled out as readily as did the others. This then is not a hopeless despair or despondency at life itself, but a sorrow. Perhaps a deep one, but not deeper than the Love in me. I suspect there is a necessary letting go, an acknowledgement of loss, a relinquishment of striving, and an acceptance of what is, yes, but there is no loss of my deeply held experience of life as goodness and love (and light, after all these emotions are part of a star). As terribly beautiful.

This journey of being human ebbs and flows between joy and sorrow…. carving us into deep wells that can contain it all. Beneath our hearts lies the bedrock that all is well, even when it appears that we are drowning.

There was much more richness in the day’s experience, most of which I will keep to myself. This North Star awareness, though, is something I’d like to explore more. What exactly does that mean, to have an emotional North Star that is grief? Does that mean it is my grief that is guiding me, right now? Does it mean I need to turn towards it, as did the wise ones of long ago, to see it, to discover what it is it has to teach me. Stop running or hiding from it or striving to fix itor make it go away, but greet it as friend. Let it gift me.

Much of my journaling yesterday seemed to spiral around this idea of being seen, of longing to be validated, valued, beloved. Perhaps that must begin with me. Greeting myself. Befriending my self. Seeing my self. Validating myself. Loving my self. Extending compassion to my self. Valuing my self. Gifting and tending to my self.

Remembering my Belovedness.

A strange sort of synchronicity followed this morning, in an email from a friend, who forwarded a New York Times religion article to me that she had ‘tucked away, because it spoke to her’ . There, in the first paragraph, the author shared these words ”An obscure text, about 2,000 years old, has been my unlikely teacher and guide for the past many years, and my north star these last several months, as so many of us have felt as if we’ve been drowning in an ocean of sorrow and helplessness.’

She then goes on to describe an ancient pilgrimage ritual, where pilgrims would climb the steps of the temple, enter the plaza, and begin circling to the right, counterclockwise, en masse. All, that is, except for brokenhearted, the mourners, the lonely, the sick, the ostracized. These would circle in the opposite direction, to the left, “and each person who encountered someone in pain would look into that person’s eyes and inquire: “What happened to you? Why does your heart ache?” and after receiving their pain would offer blessings. “May the Holy One comfort you,” they would say. “You are not alone.’

And so, this morning, I set out for my morning walk, taking the same mile loop I walked yesterday, only this time I walked in the opposite direction, that north star guiding me, to allow my pain to be greeted with comfort, with blessing and understanding. With curiosity and tenderness. And with communion — the deep knowledge that I am not alone. This is what it means to be human.

None of us are alone in that.

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

stranger in a foreign land

Recently, someone reached out to me, in response to something I’d written, with healing words of deep communion. They expressed that reading my words was akin to meeting someone in a foreign land who speaks their language.

The vulnerability of sharing from one’s depths can be a precarious venture. Leaving the safety of the dark womb within to reveal oneself to the light of a world, which is not always able receive with understanding, is risky. As a result, many of us retreat back into that womblike darkness— tucking our deepest selves into a cave for healing or safekeeping.

And yet, the longing to be known by another, and the need for intimacy and communion is part of what makes us human. We are relational interconnected beings, parts of a whole where our connection to one another (human and non-human) is Who we are. When those threads that connect us, reminding us that we are One, become thin or ragged we can feel isolated and alone. Marginalized, dangling on the edge, to carry the metaphor through.

That feeling has been with me now for some time. The blank stare that can feel like invisibility. The silence that feels like void. In these times, it truly does feel as if I am wandering, lost, in a foreign land, speaking a different language. The sense of estrangement deepens. And so this person’s words felt connective in a way that reinforced the thread.

Of course, we cannot ever truly be known by another. It is said that we don’t even truly know the depths of ourselves! The communion I seek is surrounding and enveloping me always, this I know. In the quiet I remember that I am One with All — All One, not Alone– and that it is this feeling of separateness which is the illusion.

The human-to-human communion, for which I long, is also with each of you who also feels unseen, misunderstood, unknown. If only it were easier for all of us to speak such vulnerable words aloud– the words shared with me by the person who reached out — that we all feel like a bit like strangers in a foreign land, speaking a language that no one seems to understand.

None of us is alone in that.

Shimmerings

_{This is a piece I wrote a few weeks ago, but had tucked it aside until now, as it was to be published as a weekly PrayerNote for Oasis, a contemplative community with which I am connected. (You can learn more about this organization and access previous Prayernotes, here. ) As most of you are not connected with Oasis, I am sharing this post here today, as well.}

Shimmerings

A bevy of beasts

sensing my presence

here, on the other side,

boulders downhill to water

where eyes meet and hold

tears

A child lies

bleeding and bandaged

the thin red line seeping through

what cannot be held back

by tears

I stand at the pool                                                                   

but I cannot see                                                                       

through this surface reflection of me

to what lies beneath                                                                                            

this disquieting current                                                                         

of tears

Why the title, Shimmerings, for such a piece as this? What is it that is Shimmering after all?

This piece came out as a whole after an intimate conversation with an anam cara, in which the word shimmerings kept arising within me. I was noticing the way that the mystic (in me), like the poet we were reading, senses Something shimmering – beneath, behind, within—the ordinary. And not simply the drop of dew on the rose or the watery birth of a child, but the shimmering beneath what appears to be ruin, or despair, or the darkest night. It is One and the same Drop.

Tears – of joy or of sorrow – are often the first glimpse of the shimmering. It is often in moments at either end of the human experience where the veil falls to reveal the Beautiful beneath, behind, within. But once that doorway to Soul is opened, that glimpse cannot be undone. No matter how dry the moment, hour, season, the shimmering is remembered. One knows it is there, even when on the surface all appears dark, empty, or lost in the current place where you stand. And that remembered shimmering brings comfort when one cannot see the way. A shimmer that anchors while waiting in the stillness for the sun to rise and kiss it with light once again.

All is Well,

Vicki

unutterable blinding radiance

‘John of the Cross describes how the path of maturing is one of becoming accustomed to the direct perception of light. He describes this naked intimate encounter with the Divine as being one of radiant light that we’re not yet quite accustomed to, our spiritual eyes haven’t grown accustomed to perceiving the light directly and so we experience it as darkness at first.’ – Marabai Starr in an interview on the Sounds of Sand podcast #66, Silent Light

Unutterable, as in deeply, intuitively, known (or suddenly experienced) but impossible to speak, beyond language’s ability to encapsulate or distill. As in beneath what can be spoken, foundational in the way that silence always is. Often unheard, or unattended to, at least, but always there beneath the noise, beyond the noise, within the emptiness that is never empty.

Is this not emptiness then but the rising of silence, filling-to-the-brim nothingness, such that no thing can feel as full as this, no thing can substitute, even love. Settling in to it is restful in a way that does not exhaust, nor does it bore, it is not overwhelming. 

Blinding, as unable to see, as in being cast into darkness, feeling around in the emptiness for something to grab onto to get one’s bearings, but at last being forced to simply sit, as in beyond what can possibly be seen in the same way that one cannot possibly name that which is impossible to speak, one cannot possible see what cannot be distilled into human wavelengths of vision.

This longing to see in the dark, what to do with it? This wanting 'more', which I cannot name. I close my eyes and relax there, where I cannot see. not to sleep, but to be still. As the wordlessness moves into the depths of being bathed in silence, so this blindness moves into being bathed in stillness. I realize that all of my wanting to be feel full, has only caused me to bump into all the stuff here, in the blindness of the dark. 

Radiance, as in light plus light equals dark? Radiance as in a blindness in the dark to what is so so unutterably bright that what is human in us–our senses, our desires, our smallness– cannot perceive, from our humanness. Radiance that permeates all, is within all, creates all, is expressed by all, explodes from all, e’en the darkest molecule in the darkest cave in the darkest moonless night, unperceivable but filled with, bursting with light.

So, this is the darkest of dark full of light. Not simply light, but radiance. Radiance unseen, radiance unspeakable. Radiance within. Within e'en the void of nothingness, within these insubstantial qualities of human experience --feelings and experiences, thought and breath. Radiance in what is often named as darkness, named as emptiness, named as 'beyond the pale'. How might it be to live with such awareness then, that even within what 'feels' or 'appears' to be darkness, there is only pure light...

a space for me!

Those words slipped out of my mouth, unbidden, a few evenings ago. I was certainly in a state that night, a state that seems to be a reoccurring one of late, one in which the feeling that I have can only be described as a sense of disorientation. You may recognize it better if I describe it as that zoned out space one arrives at after being hit by some trauma. In those moments, in that moment, I expect that I need to retreat into stillness and silence, to call my spirit back into my body, to quell whatever chaos is brewing, to listen.

So perhaps this is the ‘space’ I was calling for within that moment?

It is true that I have not been giving myself the silent contemplative space that both heals and centers, that calls my spirit home. From the outside looking in, one might be surprised at that, looking at my life, my days. But I have noticed a tendency to distract with mindless activity even in my alone time. Yes, some of this is the settling back into the healing hibernation of winter that my body and soul so desperately crave after the holidays, a natural rhythm which gets so thrown out of sync through all of that busy-ness, but this feels like a longer season than that. And this on me to attend to, I cannot push the blame outside.

And so, here I sit. The house is quiet. The phone on silent (they will survive without me). The urge to escape into the morning word puzzles set aside. No need to rush out the door, to fill my day with some perceived relational obligation. They will love me anyway.

Or not.

(I remember that I give of self because I love, not in order to be loved.)

It can be difficult for this kind of space, for which my inner self called out, to be seen as valuable. As valuable as all the ‘doings’ that others rightly fill their spirit with. But it is not merely that my introverted self is in need of space (though I hear in this clause that introversion still is not valued –even by me–for its intrinsic worth), something inside me is starving. Desperately in need of nurture. Perhaps this is the trauma shell-shock response to the slightest bombardment– that part of me is in survival mode because she is experiencing famine.

It was just one more piece of furniture, the other night, brought into a space that felt peaceful, a space that I could curl into, but suddenly was cluttered with another’s (fill in the blank). And yet, this other is one that I also love, whom I cherish, in truth. And that perhaps is the crux, after all.

robust?

This week’s word (in David Whyte’s book again) is Robustness, which he understands as being ‘unafraid of the frontiers where noise and change takes place — to come out and meet the world, healed from isolation, grief, illness, the powers and traumas that first robbed us of our vitality, to leave the excuses we have made and find ourselves alive once again in the encounter’

Robust, is not a word I would ever use to describe myself. The only times I can say I feel ‘robust’ is on the portage trail– there I feel both full of strength and unafraid. There, the wilderness surrounding me does not frighten me. There I experience full bodied aliveness — fully alive and at home in my body.

The wilderness of human created ecosystems is perhaps another story! I am aware of where much of this comes from in me. For one, the family I grew up in was not one where voices were safely raised, or the chaos of lively discourse allowed. We were not what I would call a ‘high-spirited’ bunch. In fact, to be too vibrant was to be considered ‘full of yourself’ and to speak out loud your dissenting voice was to get your mouth washed out with soap!

Back in his book, David speaks of the opposite of Robustness as frailty, invisibility, shrinking into the background. A sense of being ‘frayed’ (is that the same as overwhelmed, I wonder?), not at all fed/enlivened by the fullness and the chaos but exhausted by it.

I remember being full of vitality in that way once– those invincible preteen years when I was ripe and blossoming and alive — full of myself, so to speak. You know about that time of my life, how I believed that fullness attracted the predator, and that it was my fault. How I shrunk myself afterwards. How even my attempt to speak it to those who were charged to protect me was silenced and shamed.

It seems that girl is still a part of me. A part of me, however, that I have come to deeply cherish, a buried nurtured seed with a protective husk, from which I have grown. (dare I say blossomed ?). However, robustness is not at all the way she presents herself, not at all a natural or comfortable way of being for her. Instead, she is more subtle than that. Quiet. You might miss her on the hike if you are being noisy, caught up in your own chaos or distraction. No, I do not enjoy debate and argument. I do not thrive in chaos. I am not fed by extraverted banter.

I remember some 20 years ago or so doing an exercise in a trauma healing practice where I was supposed to imagine filling the bubble around me with my presence, expanding myself outward to envelope me (it was supposed to protect me). I recall the feeling something akin to terror in extending myself out in that way– the subsequent pulling in.

I am content with being small — those moments gazing out into the immense depths of the universe beneath that star-littered dome of darkness? , they bring me comfort not fear. I do not need to be big, or powerful, or in charge, or responsible. I can trust in the mystery of something bigger than me at work within this life of which I partake and participate here on earth, and within even me. I am content to be a ‘mere’ jewel in this web, reflecting light as does the ephemeral drop of morning dew, by simply being me, as I am, holding my place by holding onto the ones in my immediate embrace– perhaps even drawing water droplet to water droplet as water tends to do. A drop in the ocean am I– an ocean that is sometimes calm enough that I might make ripple enough to spread in some mysterious way unknowable to me what the effect of my action might be, though more often I suspect I am merely consumed by/lost in the wild vastness of it all.

And though at times, I recognize that I feel can unseen (or as in my last post, unvalued), as David suggests a lack of robustness may lead to such a feeling of invisibililty , for me, being small is enough. The being seen that I truly desire is a deeper one anyway. I need not be Robust. I learned long ago that I am truly powerless after all, a powerlessness I embrace as wholey humbly right, and that the only power I have is to love — myself included.

I can rest in that.

Presence and Attention

A couple of days late, but clear as a temple bell, these words came to me today as my intention and my hope for the coming year.

I suspect these words rose on me help me understand my feelings of late—what I can only name as malaise and deep sadness —as they seem to express so clearly what has been lacking in my life and that which I need to reclaim.

Presence and Attention-

What I have been longing for.
How I hope to be.

I remember once reading (in a book about parenting) that your attention is like the Sun for another. It’s very presence makes roots grow and blossoms unfold.

For me, the attentive presence of another makes me feel loved, cherished, valued enough to pay attention to.

It’s harder to come by in our distracted world , where a quick retreat to a screen pulls one’s presence away. This is one of the reasons I go to the natural world. There I am undistracted and undivided. In that simplicity of being I am Present, Attentive to whomever and whatever I am with. Present also to the mystery of it All.

If I am honest, this is what broke my heart this fall. Yes, I go to the wilderness to find my soul , to reconnect, to know my belonging, to find silence and reconnect with mystery, to rediscover home— all of this is true—but I also go to (re)connect with the one I go to the wilds with, to BE there together, to BE fully in one another’s company. The (re)bonding that occurs in that place is restorative and profound. i

Butt alas, even I n that place, where I escape with my beloved, where -at least in that one place -I have had his undivided presence, and attention, he was not present with me.

Without Presence, life is empty, without meaning. Without Attention, likewise, I can feel unloved, unvalued, insignificant.

Presence and attention.

May this be the direction towards which my life / our lives flow. May these words, given as if in blessing, as if in antidote , become my daily lived prayer. My intention and my hope.