It's not possible, I remind myself. It's not possible that these fine beings, these expressions of elemental intelligence, could crash in interaction with each other
My communication, and yours, cannot implode, you cannot be annoyed by the links I draw, my innocent observations. And it's not possible for me to feel cut, dismissed, unheard. These are not things I need to defend. I don't need to take you to task
I can be still and listen. I can be still and let your innocence rise in my thought like the climbing moon, settle in my heart like dew.
Within my thought and possibly to someone else, I'm trying to convey the nature and importance of my innocence
The nature - in my thought, it rockets up the sides of trees and down along the roots, it darts and pulses with the flow of energy, and it can do no harm, for it's defined within the very impulse that brings it forth
And as for its importance - it frees me from the minefield of regrets, it lets me know that I am whole, and always have been, it shows me, in this moment, how to be.
At day's end, behind my closed eyes, strands come like roots, mycelium, from every quadrant of my vision
Steadily they fill the center in, images and memories webbing with each other ... These summer days are long and full, and quickly I lose the threads, everything devolving into sleep.
You, too, may be delivered into the calm, into the certainty of abiding peace. This place where no storms, threatened or in full rage, can even come close to you. This because you have found relationship that stretches you full out in the experience of life, which, when awakened, makes every storm seem small
Anything, any living thing, can bring you there. You will have sure access to it when you bring others.
When I breathe deep, I smell bees, and suddenly the scent of everything is opened to me - how the June air at evening is rich with blossoms and resin, ripe grass and some distant spice, and inside the ag building, sawdust and pencil lead, various minerals
We work until after dark, though darkness doesn't come till 10, we savor the sky, and the satisfaction of work done.
Summer stretches out before us, and where, in former years, I felt like I could ride it, fly in freedom and delight along the long and carefree days, now I feel I need to carry it - bring these plants and projects to fruition, keep these trees alive
A flock of blackbirds cackles through, landing in groups of five in tops of small trees, in groups of twenty on the roof. Two mama turkeys have a fair sized brood, growing larger daily with no help from me. We saw a doe with two small fawns last week. The waxing crescent moon, and Venus, are seen a little higher in the sky each night. We all will take our place in the grand order. My work has a place here, too, and as I carry, so will I be carried.
Wisdom comes from anywhere we ask for it - every relationship where we line ourselves up, line for line, along the lines of any being for whom we have the most profound respect
Whether it's a plant, or is an animal, an elder or and infant, an angel or a colony of bees
We find it in the willingness to take the journey, however it expands us, the willingness to be untethered from any given point, to let the change unfold wherever the connection moves us
Wisdom comes in the surprise of never having thought that way before, but knowing, certainly, that it is true.
Take me back, when I wander down the old, rutted paths, finding words in my mouth that I've discarded so many times, finding myself tripping in the same old ways
Take me back to where my steps surprise me and my words are new and my presence is a revelation for me and others at the same time as we all see ourselves magnified in our epiphanies about each other and ourselves, too. Take me back to where my sight is true.
And if the day let us be lazy and mostly stay inside and read, let cold and rain delineate our idleness, this, too, is cause for gratitude
And when we feel the trees rejoice at something we could not have given, to see them make the grateful choice to sink down roots, to grow, to live
Then maybe gratitude itself has been the gift, and all these circumstances combined, conspire to bring it forth within - this sun-graced ending to the day, the soaring swoop of unexpected lift.
In moments of seclusion, I considered a life unbound by any secrets, so not depending on strings of tension and release for its excitement, but rather, wedded to the infinite, cleaving to the swift extending Spirit, feeling the rush and sparkle of its fine awareness, unimagined opening of eyes in moving from realms of atmosphere into the realm of sky.
All of this is given - the subtle colors of the grass in mist, the times of work, and this, a drift through almost sleep, where I still hear the music, but my sense of where I am slips in place, in time, in physics - my planes of presence bend, blend through each other
When I come back, the light is different, and I feel rested, but still languid, and richer for these fusings of perception, they layers they have added to my day.
Days start a little later here but stretch out even longer - plenty of time to grow, and keep growing, from small seedlings into big plants, swaying strongly in the strong wind, taking what is given by the strong sun
I feel bee-like in my steady buzz from task to task, taking strength from every specimen of sturdy growth, surprised to feel a slowdown in the evening - I had felt I could go on forever
In the process, I am learning home, sharing of place, rhythm of days, essence of Spirit that holds us in our harmonious ways.
Show me how the laws of physics are just a subset of the law of Love, and, as such, cannot run counter to infinitude of care
Show me how the fact that we are treasured overcomes the story of our being left alone and fragile in a world of danger, consigned to struggle or to sink bereft
Show me that this isn't an illusion, a myth for privileged and strong young men - show me how it works with full inclusion, so we can claim our heaven home again.
And suddenly today I feel the way I felt when we were young - grown up and setting out to find whatever was the journey that was called our lives, and coming back together for a holiday, the major strife of growing up behind us, creating home with laughter, as families do
Today my sense of failing falls away, and I see we have been living well - each of us has our own sufficient pile of life lived
And I see there is a grace that doesn't measure things like that - grace that unfolds second by second through all the seconds in which we live.
After many intervening years, I pretend that stings of isolation from my early days didn't mark me, didn't set my mind on long and searching struggles, didn't define, in any way, my sense of self
Not to say there is no sense in which that pretense counts as true, for did I not work hard to overcome the stigma? Did I not form bonds that proved me worthy of connection? And did I not carry these - what I had gained - back as proof? And wasn't I gratified to find myself graciously received?
Yes, and ... Yes, but ... Some part of me cries out for truth. Some part of me wants to be reckoned with
I may have overcome the sense of not deserving, along with social gaps that put me in the line of shunning, but this is not a smooth sea. I have worked hard for this, my innocence. I have worked hard for yours, as well.
It's very strange, she said, All these people going into the past tense. Yes, I said, and when I look around to see the people I knew, it's their children who are at the ages I remember
So many people we knew once, but don't recognize - it doesn't feel like the march of time so much as having suddenly passed through a curtain, being on the other side continually surprised to find myself here
Generations slide together. Grandchildren occupy the place where children were. Children move into the full and swift passage where time doesn't seem to move - careers are built, own children raised, unexpected lurches send lives on different courses
And we come together here. The formerly absolute gates of inclusion and exclusion are gone, their specter just a shadow I can step over ...
We all are drenched in the moment's richness, the layered colors of foreshortened time.
It takes a gentle handto tease out the tangled strands of how we think about each other, which of each other's words we've heard, which we've discounted, what we would see each other meant, if we would listen
It takes a gentle heart to smooth the ruffled sentiments, to ascertain we're smoothing in the right direction, to hear from way down deep and to respond in ways that put each other's hearts at ease
For we are tender, and we are intricate, and can't be superficially assessed, yet we are strong of fiber and can take some rearranging when it's done with gentle hearts and hands.
Streaks of light and the fact of innocence shine clear when all the lies are gone
And people find it's not too late for trading in their hard bought worldly views, the savvy of the turning cogs of wickedness, and rolling with them to come out on top
Far better the transparency of simple justice, seeing the worth of every living being, the recognition of how we're blessed by each of us, the loss to all of throwing anyone away
It isn't a hard sell, for everyone has longed for this. Each one who takes a stand helps bring it forth - the innocence defining each of us, truth that's been waiting for us all along.
It's not surprisingto eagerly await the singularity, because the way we have been going has to change. It hasn't managed to solve anything, or even give a plausible reason for wanting to be
Yet that desire, which, even still, cannot be quenched (by boredom, or oppression, or senseless self destruction) - that desire demands a matrix in which it thrives
It will provide it, made of its own essence, and consistent with the web that ties all these things together, the Mind that thinks them, the Love that calls them forth.
And so being one who healsmay not be as far away as I thought - it could be as close as standing aside enough to not be in the way of the rushing acclamation, the repeated affirmation of being, the present wholeness that would never let itself be hidden
Could be that being one who heals is simply being one who sees the manifestly obvious, the presence of the Spirit that ever breathes us all.
The pretensions don't matter.All of us may show them - the defensive or proud propping up of what we think we should be, the hapless implications of these constructs on what we think of others what we think of ourselves
We don't need to deal in these things, don't need to buy and sell, compare, determine, tally - these things do not pertain to us at all - one glimpse of truth, and it doesn't matter what any of us have been propping up - we fall like kindling flames upon the truth of our pure selves
We light up the place, we warm to what we've always longed to share - nothing we thought we were has anything to do with it - we burn, and are reborn.
And in the realm of thought,fables pool beneath the peaks like shadows, and the way we see ourselves, and the way we see others, seems to be defined by them - they rest, weighty, on the north sides, they cover more than half of us
And I imagine pulling the plug of my perception, letting the darkness drain out like water, I imagine us all redefined - what seemed intractable suddenly shown to never have been here at all, our innocence newly illumined, our brightness refreshing us all.
