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I saw the early morning sun washing over the smooth granite face of a rock outside my window and found myself drawn by its honeyed voice to join and sit. Dutifully, I followed and found myself eyes closed, hands open on my lap, submissive and quietly being warmed. The posture of worship must have originated like this. All creatures alike come crawling from their hole roused by the glow outside their tiny hovels. Since the beginning of time, we have been summoned toward the light and find ourselves before it, face upturned, in pause, taking into our bodies the curative medicine it holds. This one great orb of firelight calls all our attention. Mainly, it guides us to stop and feel, to rest and receive. It teaches us the story of creation and how to stand in it. This heartbeat at the center of all things makes the trials of our lives bearable.
I asked my 5-year-old if he felt life was easy or hard? Without hesitation, he let out an exasperated, "hard." By all accounts, this child is a privileged one. He has been born into a home with clean water to drink and food to eat, warm sheets to sleep in, and love from all corners, and yet still, he sees from deep inside there is a gap between the two worlds. The love and wholeness he feels inside has met and struggled with the many discrepancies of the outside world, and it has not been entirely comforting. He is not a depressed child but an awake one.
This being human thing is hard, this being alive. It's hard because most of what we are confronted by feels like a contradiction to what we intuit is right in our beings. We are constantly hurt and afflicted by the cruelty we find inside and around us. It's hard because we often lose touch with beauty and magic in this confusion and must toil at re-uniting with our homeland. But there is mercy and kindness interwoven. I don't mean to focus solely on hard, but the hard parts are where we need the most help.
I read in an article about the way a tree forms, "Sometimes, wind does more than gust against a tree: It blows the whole tree over, and that tree, if still rooted, must reorient the growth of its branches and buds toward the sky. Avalanches, erosion and landslides deal similar fates. And trees in all sorts of circumstances must grow around obstacles, away from competitors and toward the light. To get these jobs done, trees make a special kind of wood called reaction wood… Cellulose with a peculiar gelatinous layer is thought to act as the "muscle" that generates the pulling-up force." The tree is growing in strength as it moves.
It's becoming increasingly clear to me as I age that I, too, am being pulled into the light just like the tree. There is a stream of purity from which we gain strength, and a natural reaction leads me toward it. I have come to see we are drinking in goodness no matter the hour of the day.
