Vinn's Journal
9/1/2007 |
"Strength is not always about bouncing back all bright and smiley; it is more about letting go and looking around with curiosity and openness. Strength is allowing the story I tell myself about myself to fall away. It's about standing tall in this place of "not knowing" and trusting that the journey down the "bottomless hole" leads to the places that need looking at and loving. These places have something important to teach me."
When the Heart Waits Sue Monk Kidd
I am accompanied by ghost memories these days. This specter has a way of crystallizing any moments' movement into a frozen field in which discernment speeds infinitely beyond the immediate circumstance. At these times I live straddling between where I have positioned myself and where the flow goes before me.
Bewilderment surrounding relations and uncertainty as to where to go and how to be, accompany me in a sidecar of silhouettes that cast about searching for form and substance. The possibility that there can be a place to gather into and allow for no thing to happen remains a vapor, and is mysterious in me. I have given myself over to doing so little in the field of frivolities that the witnessing of scurrying squirrels has now become an act of profound spiritual ritual. This is my mantra as I walk the streets in awe of the arrival of the next movement moment. Now I am beginning to understand the exploits of Francis as he wanders across Assisi, still and silent, holding a field of invitation for the wild creatures of nature to abide in his temenos of sanctuary.
I too wish to be able to cup a hummingbird in the palm of my hands and feel the flutter of wings. I await realization as it quivers out from those feathers and takes flight, soaring from the bonds of youthful certitude. Like Francis, I too wish to portray the calm that delivers all to a fertile field that surrounds whenever anyone proclaims grounded stillness in the unknowable.
A field that holds each and every one without judgment, or story, or expectation is the path that I am becoming. A field that infuses the color and the shape of the meandering monk who provides a selfless origin to embrace all the people who stand bewildered and betwixt the avenues of fright and forlorn, is the path I am becoming. A field that is quick to open the heart of compassion and assure the people that whatever is going on is explicable, is the path I am becoming. A field that proclaims mystery equal to history, in its conviction and certainty, is the path I am becoming. A field that, at times, will lose all semblances of balance and brotherhood and become small and separate until the release of any breath that paralyzes presence; that is the path I am becoming.
The path I am becoming.
Travel well, vinn