Reteaching Loveliness. Staying with the Not Knowing.
Attend what's attractive. Do you have Zoom FOMO? There are so many compelling Facebook Lives and IGTVs, amazing talent and gifts being shared online. Sometimes it can be overwhelming. It's really, really okay to let all that stuff slide, and just be in the increased spaciousness that comes from not moving around. Attend what is deeply attractive for you, and nothing else.
Staying in the not-knowing. There's another kind of spaciousness, too, in allowing ourselves "not to know". Not racing ahead to what-ifs and scenario planning. Our big brains want to "figure it all out" to feel safer. What if, instead of putting glitter on the discomfort of ambiguity, or trying to find other ways to stay as busy as we were before, we work on the questions that matter in our personal and public lives. No one knows what's coming next exactly, and there's a big opportunity at this moment. Be here now. There are real immediate needs: the many suddenly unemployed; the very immediate grief of the sick and dying and their families; the many dreams that are being rethought.
As above, so below. There's also our own unattended bits of earth to pay attention to. I recently read an article revealing that a good portion of the federal government's N95 mask stockpile was found to be dry-rotted. It hadn't been managed or monitored, only left to decay. An overly frenzied society doesn't clean up after itself, doesn't do maintenance, preventive care or quality. It looks for the next new distraction, instead of paying attention. As the saying goes: As above so below. How many loose ends are there in our lives, how many unsorted boxes or drawers, how many unread books or unused gadgets, how much waste of movement and material? LOVE seeing how many people are now mending and tending their health, or money, or relationship, or home.
And finally, for these spring holidays, an excerpt from Galway Kinnell's poem St. Francis and the Sow:
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing
(read the rest of the poem at the Poetry Foundation)
To always flowering from within.
May your spring holidays be beautiful.
treat yourself
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