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Dear friend,
I pushed off from the shore on my paddleboard while the lake was still calm. Before the layers of fog lifted off the tips of the trees. The morning light was collecting like silver over the enormous body of water, and I skimmed my way across its luminous surface. I watched the peace as it watched me, a small out-of-place thing and a stranger to its shore and trees. I was almost swallowed whole by the placidity around me. I've often wondered if I enter a state of complete peace if my heart would stop working and I'd be dissolved back into the vast unknown, zapped out in a tiny blitz of energy and static.
Each sweep of my oar cut the water into circular storms that cycled out behind me. The mark of my presence rippling out back of me to be felt somewhere along the edge of the lake by a simple group of stones. I came across a log drifting ever so stoically across the top of the water and recoiled from it as if meeting some lonely thing, doomed to be rocked across the water by itself. The thought— if you are orbiting past me in this lake, I too must be another alone and lonely thing being carried by a current, never fully knowing where the water will lead or what land we may be washed onto. At first, I shuddered in fear at the possibility that I was more like the log than I wanted to admit. Still, I noticed something peculiar and extraordinary about our passing—submerged in all that water you do not sink with time. You become buoyant by the very water itself. Even a dead log, surrendered, becomes another lone something, weightless and unsinkable on the great sea of this turning world.
The message for today, and always: do not resist. Stop fighting, and as the great sages say, rest and be taken.
love,
Sarah
Also, in case you were not aware, on April 2nd and 9th, I will be leading a workshop on zoom through Insight Timer (the app). I’d love to explore our hearts together and see your faces!
For more details, please click HERE.
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Thank you Sarah. I needed your message today. My greatest problem, if you will, is letting go of all those things that keep me from living quietly in peace in the present. You’re message to rest and stop fighting is one I take to heart. Baby steps, I suppose. But with your help, I’m working on it. ❤️🙏🏻
I love this Sarah. I too find the peace and solitude on an early morning paddle and take in all I pass along my path. This reminds me of something my father said as his life with cancer was coming to an end.
“I feel as though I’m a pebble being washed down the stream into the vast sea of life.”