Solstice

The dark days. Plenty of room for reflection, if we will take it.

Having gone through the looking glass that deposited me in the role of one-who-dispenses grades, these long nights, when peanut butter and chocolate taste SO MUCH BETTER than when it’s warm out, offer a chance to take a long look as how much focus we ask ourselves to put on what is vanishingly unimportant. I’m surrounded by manufactured stress, when we could be crafting meaning and love and beauty, tapping abundant aquifers of purpose. Stricken with thirst, our ladles frantically slicing the air in all directions, we feel pushed to ignore the deep wells of our own development and learning, and our most profound creative offerings. All this in favor of preparation for some illusory future that will somehow be more “real.” Preparation, when it isn’t Practice, is pointless. All of these things we “spend” our lives on are our lives. Even the most transactional transactions, matter or energy, all are our own waves crashing on sand, beautiful, powerful, then gone back to the source.

A long time ago, when I was the recipient of grades, I read this, because “I had to”:

In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words,
Words came out of the womb of matter;
And whether a man dispassionately
Sees to the core of life
Or passionately
Sees the surface,
The core and the surface
Are essentially the same,
Words making them seem different
Only to express appearance.
If name be needed, wonder names them both:
From wonder into wonder
Existence opens.

This translation of Lao Tzu came back to me early this morning, through the nourishing work of David Whyte. Education, learning, growing and preparing for an end to growth, all part of a sacred trust that never ends, even when we do. I can’t remember the name of my Taoism teacher. I wasn’t really paying attention yet. His name, like mine, could not be less important. The compass he put in my path was what mattered. Feeling grateful for the darkness that makes that feel true and warm and comforting, just as much as that tropical sun on the water.
Sunset blur image of Nosara, Costa Rica sunset.