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"I received this pith instruction: we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice." - Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You
Yes, I seem to have fallen off the blogging bandwagon. I think it's all this late snow that's got me all mixed up. Above, snow on Easter. More snow today, a week later. When are we going to get on with it?
I just read a passage from a book by Pema Chodron about learning to stay, training ourselves, to stay with our present experience. This is how we cultivate steadfastness. (From the book The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times.)
I had a blip recently where I got all upset about something..something, something, don't want to get into it...but I was temporarily in this deep funk where I was again convinced I needed to move out of Santa Fe and back to the big city. I have since gotten over this hump and part of it is I got this guidance in my morning writing practice: that as a spiritual practice as much as a writing practice I needed to go deeper into the physical details of this place I'm in right now. That the only way out was to be more fully where I am right now.
The next day I went hiking in Jemez and was talking to my friend about trusting, trusting where we are in the moment, trusting this moment is going to bring us to the right next moment - and as we were talking the mountains and the sky and the clouds in the sky all seemed to bloom into something beyond the relentlessness of my fears and doubts from the week before. It's hard to explain...but that's why I'm into poetry, [because that's what poets do] try to put to words what is inexplicable, to bring what's numinous into the ordinary world. And this thing, this poem, can both rest on a physical page and potentially be transformative because it contains the energy of this experience...
That's all I've got for today. Hope yours is a lovely spring.
Reading poems by Jill Bialosky in the early morning, not working to get to the sacred interior but already there...the time between night and day, just as the sun is rising, a special time to tune in to things beyond and much greater than my small, worrying self: and it's easy. I think about holding the right intention for the day, what is that, and can I hold this interior space throughout it or will I get bumped around and out? Holding steady, as steady as I can, that's what it's all about.
