A Pattern of Action
(born not of the mind)
I see myself in this one. The rush to get somewhere. The urge to rid myself of Self. The attempts to think my way through what demands to be felt. The reaching, the gripping, the dissatisfaction and the doubt. Entropy and escape routes. All leading me where? Here. Of course.
We should learn not to grow impatient with the slow healing process of time. We should discipline ourselves to recognize that there are many steps to be taken along the highway leading from sorrow to renewed serenity. We should anticipate these stages in our emotional convalescence: unbearable pain, poignant grief, empty days, resistance to consolation, disinterestedness in life, gradually giving way to the new weaving of a pattern of action and the acceptance of the irresistible challenge of life.
— Joshua Loth Liebman
Though I do not want to admit it, I still tend to think the greatest answers lie outside of me despite all the spiritual teachers I revere telling me otherwise. They say to look to the place I least want to turn my eyes. You mean the very place where all the noise is? No thank you! But under the cacophony is the stillness and in the wound lies the gift. My heart knows, my mind does not. My body is afraid, my heart is not.
God comes to me as a zephyr, a mist, a subtle cosmic hand and yet I call it absence. Because it doesn’t look like it used to. Ah, it was not God who left, but I. Yet with each day, I start a new pattern of action. Out of the gripping and the trying and the WHY-ing, comes the chance to choose again. Reframe back, back, back. If I’m searching to understand in my head what only the heart can communicate, will I miss what is being said? Love, you can’t miss, you can only forget!
Fluency returns in the fullness of time. I can come back. We can all come back.
A poem I wrote a few days ago :
There Comes A Time
There comes a time
in a life
where everything feels of the utmost importance
where one misstep could blow the world into countless dying stars
forgetting we are already dying stars
I search for definition with a lump in my throat
hoping someone will remind me of
the forgotten tongue I once spoke
the curtains draw with swift decision
on my sacred slice of light
the one I had called mine
nothing is truly mine
but the prompt in my chest
of willingness
what frightful nights surround
those who heed the call
to silence
tasting only half a life
as each used portion dies
and the gift reveals itself
always
and only
inside
Till next time,
Your beautiful watercolor painting is reminiscent of the gorgeous cave drawings at Lascaux, France, primal, mysterious, and true, like the profound inner knowing of our hearts, when we are open and courageous enough to heed the message. Your lovely poem says it all.
!!!