Listen to your life.
Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is, in the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness. Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy, hidden heart of it. Because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
Frederick Buechner
Sometimes
In the very big moments
Where the foundations are being rocked
We can lose our way.
The rivers rage, and we struggle to stay afloat.
The big things of life call, demand, overwhelm us. The Reasons and the Meanings and the Hows and the Whys and all the What Ifs, and we are lost, sometimes, groundless and searching. We reach, we want to be a part of the change, we strive to encompass and understand and be relevant, and sometimes, in the midst, we are lost, grasping, knowing only overwhelm. How to find our way back…??
We have been given tools, the very basic and beautiful tools of these bodies we inhabit. Touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight. We have been given tools to bring us here into this moment, to find ourselves again, in this now, which is the only place from which we can meaningfully live and move.
How do the shadows fall across the grass outside your window? And how do they shift with the moving of the sun? What part of you awakens as you inhale the pungent scent of newly cut ginger, or get a whiff of honeysuckle on your morning walk? Where do you feel your heart beating in your body when you jump, or run, or when you tingle with fear or love? How does it feel to experience the heat of sweat moving down your back as you pull weeds from your garden? Or the strength of your muscles as you pick up your child or push through another mile on your bicycle? What is the flavor of that first bite into a fresh, firm pear? What is the sensation of the smoothness of clean sheets, the sharpness of a playful puppy’s teeth, the softness of a down comforter? What do you hear when you close your eyes and listen?
“The holy, hidden heart of it.” Understanding can come by delighting in these gifts our bodies provide. A channel to knowing, beyond what is offered by our minds, may open to us. Let us return to our bodies, our breath, our awareness, and let all our movement then arise from this place.
