Canada Saga 2011 - June 28

"I looked a hundred times and all I saw was dust. The sun broke through and flecks of gold filled the air...

"God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond...God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain."  (Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening.)

When I hear stories of the heat and drought back home, I realize that my experience of the Divine is quite conditional, more available on the mountain-top than in the basement experience.   Someone said last week that a study was done (there seems to always be some study underway) on the effects of heat on behavior - in this instance, pitchers in a baseball game were more likely to intentionally hit a batter when the temperatures were high.  Just so, when life is less than perfect, when it is hot and humid, when there is a bit of a worrisome ache or pain, when someone I love is suffering,  if I focus too much or too long on things going on around me or in the world that I have no control over, God does, indeed seem, 'under the porch,' and hidden.

Yesterday morning as I watched the sun change the greys of morning to soft pinks that filtered light through the forest, as I slowed to watch the buck cross the road and graze in a field of pale purple and gold mini-flowers, and then noticed the fragrance of the wet cedars - I suddenly realized how the sense of the Divine is more immediate and present when conditions are pleasant, and therefore how much growing I've yet to do.

In the meantime, I sit by the shore on a huge driftwood log, listening, listening, attempting to follow the music of just one wave as it dances along the shore, unable to keep it apart from the whole song of the ocean. I sit breathing, just breathing, resting in a cobra hood of scent as wild roses rise up behind me. In the distance, a small figure walks with a puppy, both reflected in the tidal pool as two islands off-shore frame the rising sun behind them. So much joy. So much love. These are the moments when we are called, I think, to hold space for those in pain, in conflict, in struggle as we pray for those who can't, all over the world. While the sense of the Divine may be conditional for the moment, it is Presence nonetheless, and we feel so blessed to be here.

For the first few years up here, we had only one car. I would leave for my morning, walk, ending up at Bradley's, our local coffee shop.  I relished the quiet time, the peace of the reflections of the morning with my books, a Morning Glory muffin, and some undisturbed time for journaling, before heading home to join Michael, who was usually just waking up. Now, we have basically a car and a half - the "half," Moms' old temperamental car, which still putters him from our home to the gym for a workout and back.

It just so happens that my coffee shop is on his route, so he stops by each morning to sip coffee and read the paper --- read it. to. me. Mostly, and at long last, he's heard my need for quiet, and we sit engaged in our own activity with a familiar contentment that long years together offers as its own reward.  But occasionally there's a story too good for him not to share, which usually happens after his second cup of caffeine.

"Listen to this," he tells me, and reads a story about a 3 year old girl in Kelowna who almost won  her hide-n-seek game.  It took two police K-9 units, a helicopter and numerous locals searching for her, before she was finally found under the blankets in her bed. We both laugh, but I'm reminded immediately of T.S. Eliot's wisdom on the ultimate outcome of our own spiritual journeys:  "With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this calling we shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time."

We play hide-and-seek with our search for meaning, for purpose, for finding the sense of the Beyond to, and in, our ordinary moments. We look everywhere for a sense of belonging, for a sense of Presence, for the power of the Love that draws us from our basement experiences and calls us to the mountain tops. Then we suddenly find the whole world revealed when we kneel to see a tiny purple flower, and instead see the world reflected in the drop of dew clinging to it. Because it is usually on our knees, in praise or pain, when we finally see that Light has been in the broken glass, when all along we've been searching for the diamond.

Michael's back in Louisiana for a few weeks.  As I watched his plane leave our tiny airport on Sunday morning, I thought of the variety of good-byes we say on our journeys, as life itself simply continues.  There was that moment watching Brett and Stephanie, standing together in the snow at the edge of the world on top of Whistler, both of them facing out to the vista beyond, arms wrapped around each other's waist, content and quiet in the familiarity of their short time together. With a stab of poignancy,  I realized he really has moved on from us into his new life as a man, and we, on the edge of our own lives, like our parents before us, fade softly into the background.  All the while,  flecks of gold are shining. We give thanks and praise from under the porch, and on the mountaintop and, through this complicated and wonderful life, as Nietzsche suggested,  we "embrace the dark night of the soul and howl the eternal Yes!" What else is there to do?

YAY GOD