"The place you are right now, God circled on a map for you." (Hafiz)
"Where mystery is absent, there can be no wonder." (Neil deGrasse Tyson)
Last week, Michael and I sat outside for lunch on the deck of one of the local waterfront restaurants.
There was a bit of a chill in the air, so we chose a spot in the sun, near the railing closest to the water, now at its low ebb with noisy gulls floating in the tidal pools. A young family sat at a table near us, and the
3 year old wandered over, peering through the railing out at the world. She quickly spied the gulls, and said excitedly, "CHICKENS!" Her Mom called, "No, those are seagulls." Since she was looking at me, I added "Yes, baby, those are seagulls." She looked unsure, and said again, more quietly this time, but with determination "chickens."
Thinking it might help, I said, "Chickens live on the farm, on the ground. Seagulls love the water. Those are seagulls." She looked at her Mom, looked at me, looked down at the seagulls now strangely quiet, as if they, too, were waiting for their fate to be decided. We could almost see her little brain gears at play. She said, very softly but quite surely, "water chickens." The gulls came back to life, flapping and boisterous, sending her joyfully, the dilemma now solved, back to her mom. We marveled at her process, smiled at her cleverness, and joined that adult conspiracy that realizes the brevity and innocence of our children's true knowing.
Many of us walk through life this way, misnaming or renaming in our own limited awareness, the gifts that
flow to us, as Rilke indicated when he wrote that love and death are great gifts, mostly passed on unopened. Or we're like the early Spaniards who sailed from the ocean into the headwaters of the Amazon, thinking it, too, was salt-water and thus perished from thirst surrounded by the world's largest source of fresh water. After a long and beautiful hike on Saturday, saturated with the wonder and mystery all around us, Michael and I encountered a family near the parking lot. The two young boys were pouting, kicking rocks and ready for their electronics. "You can only watch Nature so much," the youngest told his parents. The adults shared a smile, and a long sigh.
How do we plant in the young seeds of awe for the Love all around them, manifest in such simplicity and beauty? How do we stay grounded in our capacity for good and the truth of our original blessing in the midst of hurricane warnings, evacuations, illness, contention, aging and, in my family's case, coping with the ever-increasing neediness of our elderly mother where there are no easy answers. How do we nurture in our own souls a wonder rooted in mystery when there is so much distraction clamoring for our attention in the trivialities of news, politics, gossip and 'entertainment?'
In just such a thicket of mindlessness, I walked out towards the water one morning, facing east in a daily ritual of prayer, an acknowledgment of the Light after darkness. In an intuitive gesture, I found myself turning around just in time to catch a waterfall of rainbow dropping out of a large grey cloud, all reflected in the tidal pool below a nearby sandbar.
The mental fog slowly lifted as the gentle morning surf came into focus, along with the touch of soft cool morning air. For ten minutes I stood with nothing on my mind except the vibrancy of the colors, wondering which would linger and be the last to go. The rainbow turned into a warm peach/coral brush-stroke, and I was suddenly in my mother-in-law's room standing at the window just after she drew her last breath, stunned that a soul in grief could still be touched so deeply by the colors of dawn.
In that moment, as on this beach 3000 miles and eight years away, time became the mystery, the gift, the wonder, the portal through which the Divine beckons us, through a death, or a rainbow or a memory. Standing on a beach, sitting by the bed of a dying loved one or on a deck with a precocious three year old, wandering on a mountain trail or evacuating to a hotel in a storm: wherever we are is our circle on the map.
For my family last week in the throes of Hurricane Isaac, their circle on the map was the hotel a hundred miles away from evacuated homes, ministering to each other and to strangers through kindness. In a grey lobby, they were rainbow colors of music and song, growing in love and recognition of the gifts each had to offer.
We do our best and struggle to pass the sense of mystery on to those we love, using inadequate words and offering experiences that we hope will break open their own sense of gratitude for the gifts that surround us. "Oh God, what have I seen?" Emily Carr cried, in the midst of Pacific Northwest beauty. "Where have I been? Something has spoken to the very soul of me - wonderful, mighty, not of this world." Perhaps that's why we struggle with words and names in these experiences of mystery and wonder. They touch those places in us that are "not of this world." Then, like the three year old on the deck with her water chickens, by any other name we recognize the grace of God that floats in the tidal pools of Presence.
YAY GOD
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