August 23, 2020

01

When too much comes at us
too fast,
too often,
we need to go "where the wild things are,"
or at least read "The Peace of Wild Things,"
by Wendell Berry.

We need to immerse ourselves in the natural world.

We were born into that world.
We are a part of that world.
We belong to that world.
And when the artificial world
we have constructed
to take the place of that world
and keep us comfortable and safe
becomes unlivable,
we have to regain our balance and harmony
by reconnecting with the rhythms and wonder
of the natural world.

Two things we will notice
are the silence and the noise.
The silence and the noise
transport us from the artificial world and its reality
to the natural world and its reality.
Step willingly into the silence and noise
of the natural world
and wait.

You are waiting to be enveloped by the natural world.
To make the transition.
To belong.

You are waiting for the shift in perspective
that opens your eyes
and makes all things new.

If we spend our time in the natural world
can't waiting to get back to the Real World,
we are wasting our time
and our opportunity.
We have to learn the trick of being there.
It is the trick of being wherever we are.
Being there is the best trick in the book
(And one of the best movies in my experience,
but that's for another time).

Being there/here transports us to the place of power--
to the pivot point between past and future,
to the fulcrum,
"the still point of the turning world"
(T.S. Eliot)
where everything waits,
holding its breath,
to see where it all goes from here
with everything hanging on what we do
and how we do it.

When too much comes at us
too fast,
too often,
it is because we have lost the perspective
of The Eternal Now,
where time is suspended
and nothing is happening
because we are present
with awareness and compassion,
seeing all,
and waiting.

Meanwhile,
the tide is coming in,
or going out,
or turning around.
And will continue to do so
until it finds itself doing what it is doing then,
coming in, 
going out,
our turning around,
in its own time,
in its own way,
when it suits it to do so,
when the time is right,
and things happen as they need to happen
of their own accord,
with nobody doing nothing.

That is the way of the natural world.

Nothing happens there before it time,
or after its time,
or out of time,
out of sync,
out of place.

That's the schtick of the Real World.