Lines in the sand…
The phrase “lines in the sand,” comes to mind as I step out of the morning meditation and onto the proverbial page of the written word…
It’s been a moment since I offered wind into the sails of this conversation, and so many words have arisen and passed away in the interim. Some things I felt “I needed” to say, others appearing like little luminous guides along the path, and yet…
I have seen, enacted, and been the focus of other apparent priorities… Each step leaving its mark to be washed away, and yet more often than not, rippling forward echoes from what has been to what will be.
This is the very distinction of the meditative practice, for me. What, or is it which, realized nature of this existence so gracefully releases the binding of tension, anxiety, and other grasping that holds us to our repeated echoes of suffering? As the same breath, what of that nature opens to the deepest currents of cosmic love, compassion, and creativity that flow out as the expression of joyful celebration and a fecund generosity?
It is a damp gray day on the eve of a new year here in San Diego. Inside and outside blur with each passing sprinkle of rain proceeding itself with little eruptions of discomfort in my physical flesh.
On one hand, I might contract into the pain, on the other I can surrender to the fullness of the feeling and let love for others pour out my heart in silent prayer for the well-being of all.
A note from abroad on the app for international messaging reminds me that beloved others too are practicing similarly; in Sri Lanka our friends have gone from 3 to 2 meals per day. Still others, from two meals to one… The message reads in part, “we are not only going through trying times, but also starving times…” and yet finishes, “Let’s smile… Stay blessed… I remember you with much love and gratitude.”
Always this world is filled with such diversity of experience, a profound vastness of distinction, and yet all of these divisions just lines in the sand, washed away in an instant under close observation and reflection.
And still the journey takes form, long arcs of apparent consistency stretch through our lives, the familiar persisting as we tailor and tune our habitual response from moment to moment.
Not long ago I enjoyed a firsthand tour of the local medical facility when the flu I had acquired fell just a little too deep, becoming pneumonia to boot. Two days in the emergency department, six more admitted to “the floor,” and 12 at home to recover my breath.
This pattern echoes a similar hospitalization for spontaneous pneumothorax in the same season just three years ago. Now, like then, I return to the quiet time of the closing year, aspirations of inspiration, movement, and growth meet an outgoing tide of energy, exhale, coming to rest, calm, the moment of the day.
As I write these words, the still point of midnight washes over the globe, creeping time zone by time zone in a westerly turn, a line in the dark sand leaving in its wake a new moment of dawn, awakening, and the coming creativity of the new day.
The first weeks of the year here anticipate more rain and gray, with this I anticipate further ripples of fleshy discomfort; more opportunities to practice realizing the heart of spacious generosity.
In familiar clumsy fashion I have spent much of the last week imagining myself a paragon of productivity, while the reality has been much more one of pleasant distraction in conversation with others and falling into eddies of inquiry surrounding some nature of our emerging world…
It is only in the last day or so that I have realized the folly of fighting the tide so this morning can relax with some ease to playfully share these words, and let those otherwise “important” matters of local state like weekly reviews and professional reports take second chair.
Even now, as these words trickle down the worn pathways of my mind and into the stream of this page, I noticed myself seeking some mechanism of productivity, a dam along the course way from which to generate “useful power”. I’m chuckling at the habitual attempt to harness a lazy Nature, still in the timeless moment of ebb, towards a flowing contradiction.
I’ll close in the spirit of exhale. With a heart full from the majesty of an oft terrifying and terrible year, new friendships, profound strength of community, learning and growth with ever deeper roots, and increasing humility which brings me closer to others each day past those lines in the sand separating self from other, I’ll breathe out gratitude, a thanks for all that I’ve been given, a thanks for pathways of connection, a thanks for the joyful reflection in the mirrors of perception, a thanks for the gift of creativity flowing through and beyond all signs of division divided from perfection.