"In the most sacred places, we do not perceive spirits, but only the silence of the Great Mystery. We go to those places to touch the deepest wisdom and to renew our being."
(Kenneth Cohen)
Spring birds of soft yellows and pale reds twitter and frolic and tease each other in the junipers outside our back window. They don't seem at all dismayed that the temperature is a very un-seasonal 50 degrees, the skies a deep pre-snow grey over the mountains, and the winds are picking up, although the rains have stopped for the moment. Our neighbors' bright, colorful hanging basket across the way is the only sign that this is not a winter day.
"June-uary," the locals are calling it; me, I'm loving it. After sweating for the last few weeks, wearing sweats and turtle necks is a very welcome change. Hopefully the temps will be somewhat warmer when Michael arrives next Sunday. He doesn't share my joy in this type of Pacific Northwest weather. He and Brett left New Orleans this morning on their father/son trek across the country to Seattle, where it will end, appropriately, on Father's Day. Brett will fly back to NYC, and Michael will continue on, arriving here in Qualicum, hopefully, that evening.
My own arrival last week was accompanied by a welcoming committee of one. As our plane cleared the tall pine trees surrounding the tiny Qualicum Airport last Wednesday evening (after my twelve hour odyssey of flights and airports), a lone bald eagle watched the runway. And since Daigle, in its French form d'Aigle, means 'of the eagle', it seemed to book-end a journey that had begun with another bald 'eagle' dropping me off in New Orleans earlier that morning. Somehow, in between, I had managed to pick up a ferocious flu virus which set in Thursday night, accompanied by 102 degrees fever, and associated muscle aches and pains. It was a good weekend, chilly and damp, to rest, keep warm and heal, and be grateful that my doctor had insisted I bring flu virus medicine with me last year.
Although I knew my neighbors and friends would willingly assist me by going to the store, getting me movies, and making me comfortable, there was another part of me that needed this enforced solitude after the past year. It was a time of stillness that I probably would not have taken otherwise. I remembered my wise old Doctor's prescription for rest from years ago: two hours in bed: no TV, no reading, no music, just rest; then one hour up - alternate this pattern for as long as necessary.
So for 2 days I floated between worlds - groggy dreams, hazy bouts of aches, deep sleep, warm memories. I thought of such beautiful people who have been so sick recently, and called out their names for blessings, feeling like some Romper Room Teacher: "I see Tommy, and I see Chris, and I see Pat, and I see Paula and I see Denny." From our own wish to be well emerges the most honest prayer for the healing of all who are suffering - a measure of the individual's innate unity with all of creation.
It wasn't until I got to my precious Rathtrevor Provincial Park this morning, however, that I felt fully on the mend, from the sickness, and from the jolts of last year. When I entered the park, with all of her familiar fragrances and sounds and silences, I had to agree with Elizabeth Bibesco, who wrote in Balloons: "Talk about the joys of the unexpected, can they compare with the joys of the expected, of finding everything delightfully and completely what you knew it was going to be?" Sumptuous pink wild roses were everywhere, their sweet odor layered above the cedar forest floor; fresh sea breezes swirled in occasionally. It was all balm, washing over the experiences, inviting new awarenesses and gently supporting the very act of breathing and living.
Before I could walk the park, though, I had to sit, to be still, as if I could ever take all of the Mystery, the Wonder, the All of it in. It didn't escape me, however, that the wondrous mystery of All could - and does and will - take in all of me. So I chose a large old tree, fallen, weathered smooth and washed-up by the seashore, to sit on while I just listened. Soon all sound was fading into a gentle surf mantra, its steadiness a chorus to life, to the benevolence that surrounds us, always.
With each soft rush came the awareness: these waves would never hit these rocks in this way under this sky ever again. Life was all happening, right here, right now as it does in every moment, for the first and last time, and it was painfully, extraordinarily beautiful and sad. The whole winter came flooding back, filling the mind first, through memories of numbing medical jargon and hospital experiences, then the heart with emotions of those days and nights of wondering, and finally welling-up in tears, of release and relief and gratitude and joy and being.
Heart attack, congestive heart failure, life-style shift, Brett's joyfully anticipated marriage, tearing-down our beloved old home, rebuilding, acknowledgement of our parents' hard-fought wisdom, illnesses of loved ones, the reality of endings and impermanence, the groaning of the world in its rebirthing, the ecstatic breath-taking beauty of our crazy quick lives. How can we be anything but grateful?
Eckhart Tolle, on his Findhorn Retreat DVD, tells the story of a commercial someone sent to him. It depicts an infant being born, shot out of the womb like a cannon ball into the sky, screaming. As it climbs higher, it ages, becoming a young boy, a teen, a young man, reaching its zenith as an adult, then beginning its descent, still screaming until it crashes into its grave as an old man. The entire life is depicted in this 30 second commercial with its message that life is short. Such a profound message, taught by mystics of the ages, and captured in such dramatic fashion by what Eckhart remembered as something as banal as a beer ad.
Sometimes our lives do seem like that. The young, caught up in the exhilaration of ascent, turn the newborns' terrified scream into a youthful, joyful cry. At our peak, we groan as we realize the descent is coming. When we are wise, we see the beauty, perhaps screaming it indistinguishably to those on their way up, and holding it for those falling around and before us, our voices raised now in their final cry of awe and recognition, praying that someone will do the same for us.
"Beauty," Thomas Moore has written, "takes you out of your cramped, merely personal worries, and sets you down in a field of eternity...The experience may last only a moment, but in these matters a moment is enough." Whether it's viewing a work of art, hearing an eagle at sunrise, spending time with a precious child, hearing a loved one's voice on the phone, sharing memories and laughter, or listening to an ocean chorus of ecstatic joy, each experience touches our deepest wisdom and renews our being.
It's good to be home.
YAY GOD
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