Canada Saga 2009 September 15

"To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness". (Eckhart Tolle)

" For, truly, in the remembrance of God, hearts find rest." (Surah-ar-Ra'd 13:28)

 

We had anticipated staying in Canada until October 1st. We had anticipated attending our nephew's wedding in Columbus, Ohio last weekend, and then enjoying our last two weeks in Qualicum Beach before packing up, saying good-bye to friends, and flying home.  Then life happened, unanticipated events arose, and here we are in Covington, having missed the wedding and rushed the good-byes.  Michael was already back in Louisiana, so I had the bitter-sweet job of closing up our home and making last minute visits. Although my mother assures me that 'everything is grace,' I did not feel 'ease and lightness,' and was certainly resistant to this change in the plan. 

 

Everywhere I went, I heard the same thing: "Where did the summer go?"  There were so many plans at the beginning of the season, so many expectations of hikes, trips, dinners and connections.  Time seemed to stretch out from June all the way until October, and all things were possible. Suddenly, it was over, and I was getting on the little 6-passenger airplane to fly to Vancouver for the flights home.

 

It unnerves me to fly like this, and at the same time fills me with awe and joy. As the tiny plane flew East, a shroud of dark clouds chased us, slowly swallowing the Island, and the bright summer days.  Now there was only water below, and towards the mainland, pools of sunlight reflected on the ocean beneath the breaking grey strata above us.  We were flying between airy wisps of clouds, and I watched the freighters and ferries working the shipping lanes below.  I couldn't resist this looking out and down, which both terrifies and opens me to total wonder at the pure unadulterated magnificence of life. The horizon was filled with snow-capped peaks, the ocean was sprinkled with dark green forested islands, my eyes were filled with tears and the engines hummed along.  "For happiness one needs security," Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote,  "but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair."  

 

Periodically over the summer, as Michael and I would sit by the water in the evenings, he would comment on how blessed we were to live in this beautiful place. Life in all its beauty and joy becomes more precious, I think, as we get older.  We have a friend who, last year anticipated his future, and saw its limits, that he would only have x-number of years to return to the Island, x-number of years to own a boat, etc.  He was matter-of-fact about this and, of course, it was great speculation.  We have neighbors, though, who are well-passed his 'limits' and going strong.  Two of our most elderly neighbors still walk hand-in-hand each morning, slowly, hesitatingly, with enormous smiles on faces that are an open-invitation to share their joy in just being,  I think they realize the gift of not so much seeing how little time they have, as in the preciousness of this day, this morning, this greeting.  Or perhaps they appreciate it all because they do see how little time we have for kindness and loving and joy.

 

"And joy is everywhere;" the poet Ragindranath Tagore reminds us, "It's in the Earth's green covering of grass; In the blue serenity of the Sky."  It was in the deer who seemed to be saying their farewells in Rathtrevor that last rainy morning  when the ocean, as one full body, breathed in rolling swells beneath a grey/green sky.  It was in the busy-ness of the starlings and herons, fussing on the shoreline in the tidal pools under a relentless drizzle.  It was in the hugs and well-wishes from friends, and in the memories of such a lovely summer.  And it was in the view from the jet as we gained altitude out of Vancouver, the mainland mountains receding, the beauty of the Columbia River and other smaller rivers cutting their way to the Pacific through gorges of steep dark green.

 

Such is the beauty, the generosity, the giftedness of life that, regardless of what unfolds around us, we have the option of remembering Where the heart finds rest.  Once again, it's been a joy to share the summer in these Sagas.  I pray for each of you that state of grace, of ease, of lightness that comes in knowing that the Divine is unfolding, that 'everything is grace,' and that All Is Well.

YAY GOD

 

Canada Saga 2009 September 7

"Let us practice courage this day, stepping into the vast Mystery of what we do not know and cannot control." (Anonymous)

"Remember, a leap of faith is not jumping from Point A to Point B; it's jumping from Point A." (Meredith Gould, Deliberate Acts of Kindness)

 

Last fall, I took  Grace Alivia for a walk to the lakefront in Mandeville.  It's a joy to be in nature with a 4 year old; actually, it's a joy for me to be with her in Barnes and Nobles or in her room playing dress-up or riding in the car singing or talking.  But this particular morning we were going to visit my favorite tree, a giant oak with enormous elegant branches that flow to the ground, weighted with the hundred or so years of growth through summer storms, hurricanes, winter winds and drought.  It stands in a corridor of four or five such trees, but this one is my particular favorite, with a space in her roots where I've made an altar of sorts in the crevices, where I hide the treasures I bring from my walks. There are tentacles of gnarly roots around her girth, which I knew would provide little play 'houses' for our adventure.

 

As Grace and I were approaching this beautiful oak, we found a small acorn half-buried under leaves and grass.  We carried it to the tree, and I held it next to the massive trunk and told her how that tiny acorn was planted by God many years ago, and through a mystery we will never quite understand - although I didn't use those words with her - has now grown into this great big tree which shelters us on hot days, gives us a place to play and provides food and nesting for birds and squirrels.  She listened as I spoke, and after we had played a bit, picked up the acorn, carried it to the little altar which she had made and laid it quietly under some leaves.

 

One of my rituals with this lovely oak is to walk around it in the pre-dawn quiet, slowly, meditatively, three times counter-clockwise, before standing in prayer.  I watched this particular morning in what Sam Keen calls "wonderosity," a word he coined for that magical mixture of curiosity and wonder, as Grace stood up from our play and, knowing nothing of my own personal ritual, slowly turned three times counter-clockwise before smiling at me, and prancing off in a dance around the tree. The mystery of her sweet beauty in that moment, as I wondered how much she understood or how much she would remember,  was every bit as filled with awe for me as the mystery of the acorn and the oak tree.  I prayed that she would be one of those people that Abraham Maslow wrote about, who "have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy."

 

The cycles of Nature provide us with a sense of security: acorns become oaks; day follows night; trees lose their leaves; the sun rises and sets earlier now; tides ever-shift; rains drench the earth, and flowers follow. The sun moves in a different arc now than it did in early summer, the result of the ever-changing earth rotation.  A waxing moon  is a teasing preview of the full moon that follows, being followed itself by the waning moon, all of which effect the tides, and the fishing.

 

Michael and I sat out near the water before he left to return to Louisiana for business last week. We were reading, observing, just being on a lovely day with a touch of fall in the air. Suddenly, a flock of shorebirds lifted off of a sandbar that was slowly disappearing with the incoming tide. The flock, in complete harmony and unison, banked left, swooped down over the shore,  banked right, their underbellies gleaming white in the bright daylight, made a complete circle, then landed as one in what would be given a perfect 10 if it were an Olympic event.  There was no leader, no sound, just flight and motion and symmetry and mystery.  Although scientists are still trying to explain such phenomenon, we are beginning to develop language for it: there are morphogenic fields and zero energy fields and quantum-physics'-phrasing for what we are only beginning to explore in depth.

 

I experience that 'wonderosity' again as I watch the eaglet feathers on the dining room window sill, the fluff gently undulating in a room that is otherwise perfectly still, the only possible motion the stroking beams of the bright sunlight. The creation of these mystical rhythms that swirl around us tease us into thought and prayer, and awe.   

 

It is the same current of grace that flows through the mantra of the Holy Names, the zikr of the Sufis, the rosary with its mystical mysteries, the litanies with their lovely repetitions, a rhythm all their own.   From my high school days, I  hear the sonorous "Ora Pro Nobis," as chanted in response to the Latin invocations in the dark quiet chapel of the Convent.

 

"As we acquire more knowledge," Albert Schweitzer once wrote, "things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious." We are at the mercy, and in the mystery, of the eternal infinite Compassionate Dancer Who leads us on as we leap from Point A into the music of life's dance.

YAY GOD