States of United Interdependence
The other day I was feeling unsettled. Do you ever walk around with that vague sense that things are not just as they should be? Life takes on a slightly grey cast.
I cast a glance around the various departments of my life, taking stock and trying to identify where the soft alarm sounds were coming from. Of course plenty of details put their hands up to be counted – persnickety clients, the not-100%-perfect mate, the weather, my graying hair, yet nothing was really the matter. I realized it was just my nemesis mind running. That constant running and running of the mind, worrying things, niggling with things, fretting and complaining about things like a little nasty-spirited gremlin sitting in the corner of my world kvetching and muttering glumly that details aren’t just as he wants them.
Meanwhile there is so much wondrously good about my life, and about Life.
I come back to connection, which I know is at the heart of it. We humans want and need connection more than anything else. It’s core to our well-being.
Connection with other humans can be complicated. Ha! Connection with nature is not. So in the midst of my discontent I looked around at the ordinary trees and stones, the ordinary sky and clouds, the unremarkable crows and sparrows on very normal lawns and shrubs and took a big breath and remembered I was connected to Life flowing around me and in me. I had forgotten, distracted by my complaining mind.
Connected right now. No waiting. Connected now with the whole great rolling ocean of life — which includes all those other human beings! I felt better at once. A little like waking up from a bad dream.
The ground underfoot is solid. The air filling my lungs is dependable and truly wondrous if I stop to consider it for a moment. The blood is rushing and returning in my chest. All these thoughts are just thoughts – but thought leads to feeling and to knowing, and that leads to peace.
I’m reminded now of a Mary Oliver Poem I’ve always loved:
Tell me about despair, yours,
And I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of rain
Are moving across landscapes,
Over the prairies and the deep trees,
The mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
Are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
Over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.
Read This Week’s Poem (by Garth) We Grieve Only While Sleeping
Read More about Words of the Land
I offer a poem and a story in response….from Meister Eckhardt.
“All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with
worries about things that bother only
burros.
And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labor.
Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a pear, but more
than that,
he looks into the burro’s eyes and touches her ears
and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh,
because love does that.
Love frees.”
The healing magic of stopping to offer loving presence, aware and mindful connection.
Carol, thank you for this lovely poem. Yes, love seems the most powerful healer, liberator, enlivener. Underneath the peace of nature must be love, too, a grateful knowledge of inexplicable connection.