We each exist as an intersection of light. Our breathing in is a coming into being, a bringing together of all that is into a single awareness. Our breathing out is an effervescence of new knowledge generated by the collision of worlds. As the light dances, so do we take form, reflecting and giving out the radiance of connection. Where the light of many energies shimmers in sympathy, life is born. We are the embodiment of connection, breathing the many into one and the one into many.
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I think writing is a doorway; when we pass through it we are reminded just how incomprehensibly vast and unexplored is our universe. The light in which we see each other is different there.
The moral war has shifted. The measure of our virtue is now the extent to which we embrace and welcome refugees and displaced persons of every kind. The new literacy and currency of compassion involve a willingness to open our doors, without reservation, to unimaginable levels of change on an unprecedented scale.
So heated and divisive is the debate that emotional honesty comes at potentially high cost. And yet without it, without looking our fear in the face and having compassion for ourselves in our own weakness, we cannot hope to have the level of compassion needed to genuinely embrace the future and all that it may bring. So I have chosen to acknowledge my fear. I would love to be the person who wholeheartedly and unreservedly opens my heart to all those in need of succour and sanctuary, but, if I am truly honest, I am not. The truth is, I am afraid. And unless I feel completely safe to bring that fear out into the open and own it, it will grow in size, becoming an irrational storm cloud of immense proportions, threatening to unleash itself on not just me, but all of us. And so I claim it. Of what am I afraid? I am afraid of being suffocated in an ever-growing sea of faces: so many that each one loses all meaning and I can no longer find it within myself to see and reverence the beauty of each individual. I am afraid that I will lose the right to personal space and solitude, in cities swollen with human population. I fear that the green, fresh, aching beauty of the world will recede behind more and more concrete, carved into ever-smaller blocks of living space. And I feel fear every time I see growing evidence of cultural practices I do not yet understand, such as women walking always behind, always in the wake, of men. My mind creates its own dark stories and I am awash in emotions I never imagined I might have. What do I need in order to feel safe? What do I need in order to see past a sea of faceless humanity and into the hearts of beautiful, precious, irreplaceable human beings? I need, of course, to understand and learn, so that change might seem a rich blessing rather than a grievous loss. I need to learn that even in the face of high diversity and difference I can feel, not alienation and isolation, but deep connection. But even more fundamentally, I need a place of refuge within my own self. I need to grant myself permission to honour my own space and time and to be firm in my own roots in the face of shifting, dissolving and re-forming social mores. When the world seems a howling maelstrom to my slowly awakening senses, I need confidence in my ability to bend but remain firmly rooted before the wind. As the world changes, I need to know that change does not mean erasure. If certainty is lost, I am not, and neither is each unique soul encountered along the way. I choose to stand and claim my overwhelming weakness and fear. I own the poverty of my slowly adapting responses and give myself permission to stumble - as many times as needed. I own that we may yet see the day when we can look into each other's eyes with calm assurance and find ourselves within the eyes and heart of a stranger. I choose refuge for us all. The path of my becoming lay through a great and terrible defeat: the defeat of the person I was "meant" to be. Becoming myself came at the cost of recognising that I am not kind, not generous or selfless, not humble or giving. I am not any of the things that I so longed to be or that I held as a vision before myself. I longed to be the person who brought light and hope to the world. I failed.
I was defeated, not by ego or self doubt or unrealistic expectations, but by my own nature, that calls to introspection, dreams and imaginary worlds. I fought with great ambivalence for many years, uncertain who or what the "enemy" may be, before finally I recognised that the one true obstacle was the one I had no heart to conquer. And only in accepting this truth about myself and knowing myself to be the "anti-hero" of my own life have I found a way to move and breathe forward into freedom. There is no arrival, but there is acceptance. There is magic, excitement and discovery. And yes, there is that thing I was taught should not be possible except through devotion to others: there is joy. Life rarely offers up perfectly framed moments, with nothing to do but stand back and admire. Seldom is the view within our lens both sharp of focus and spectacular of lighting. And even if it is, it may appear flat and uninteresting, devoid of soul or story.
It is when we bring to the world an eye thirsty for beauty in all its forms, with all our skill and experience bent to the task of seeing beyond the obvious and the expected, that we become like the explorers of legend, encountering new lands of uncharted territory at every step. We learn to strive and simultaneously to let go. We come both to see more clearly and to relinquish all that we believe is there to be seen. And there, unexpectedly, nestled within the heart of our lens, completely unlooked for, may be the gift we never thought to find. Perfectly framed. Always to be remembered. We are practical creatures. We consume learning as though it were best bought in bulk; we inhale it and race through it as fast as we possibly can. Our minds are stuffed to overflowing and we would give anything to simply take a break and laugh and play again.
What a shame! Do you remember the first time you managed to tie a shoe all by yourself? Or when you looked at the clockface and realised that you understood it? Suddenly the numbers and the hands made sense, and you knew exactly what the time was! I certainly remember how desperately I wanted to learn to read, and just how excited I was, sitting at my very own desk in Prep, seeing all those letters on the board and for the first time being given names for them. Aa Bb Cc... So many letters, so much to learn! But before I knew it, I could spell the word "cat"! C A T, cat. And so many more words followed. This year I want to be excited about learning again. I don't want to scull it like a pint of beer, drinking it all down in one great gulp I hardly have time to taste and then feel overloaded afterwards. Instead I want to savour each sip as it comes to me, like watching the miracle of a single candle flame. What a joy to childishly record each new piece of information and know that today there is something I know that I never knew before. And there's something I can now do that I could never do before. It is the most exciting thing in the world, to know ourselves still growing, still capable of change. If we choose, we can delight in every single new thing that never was before. |
Introduction
"Only that day dawns to which we are awake," wrote Thoreau. This blog, in words and pictures, is my attempt to be awake: to be alive to the mystery of life. It is an exercise in gratitude and wonder, and an open invitation to beauty. Archives
May 2019
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