High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘peace’

Now and then, an hour drifts past, rare in its perfection.  Thought dissolves in its beauty and peace. The line between you and not-you falls away.

Now you are the sky and the high wisps of cloud.  You are the blades of grass and the ten thousand leaves.   You are the rocks and pebbles in the stream and the stream itself.

The shadows and the light within you cast themselves across the calm waters.  The crooked and the straight, the rough and the smooth of you shine back from them and from their shores.

The distant laughter of children at play, the hum of insects, the coursing of your blood, and the rhythm of your heart all merge into a single song.

The soft air breathes itself through you until you, too, dissolve completely.  And all that’s left is the knowing that there is no outside.

The sky and waters and all that lie above and below them leave their marks, etch their colors on your mind.   Everything you perceive is but an interpretation of the dance; the reality is too large for seeing.

It’s the paddling itself that enriches and grows you, the experience of moving through the dream, the way your interpretation shapes its flow.  It becomes whatever you name it.

Call it rough and the waters of the dream will roil and churn; call it calm and it will be so.  That’s its magic.  It reflects you to yourself and shows you the consequences of your naming it.

It paints your mind in layers, comprehending your meaning.  It knows whether you are intending adventure or fear when you order rough waters.  It knows whether the calm will evoke boredom from you or peace.

Paddle on; the journey is for your bliss and understanding.

Behind the old shed at the property’s edge, wild phlox grows.  It’s a common wild flower in these parts, strewn along the roadsides in lush bouquets of lavender and white that signal the approach of summer.

But this little clump is special to me, shining its colors into the dim, shaded spot where little else, besides the ubiquitous buttercups, will blossom.

It’s an unpretentious flower, sweet in its simplicity, calming in its colors, rooted deeply in its knowing that now is its season, that joy is its song.  It rests the eye and lifts the spirit and makes you feel that you, too, belong in this season, singing joy.

“Be at peace,” it croons.  “All is well, and you are loved.”

The river is full and swiftly flowing.

All week, rain and melting snows have raced down the slopes of the hills in ever-widening rivulets, carrying the winter’s debris, filling the waters, creating complex currents, raising it beyond its accustomed level. It spills over the places where the banks are worn and low.

I understand.  Our world has shifted, and its tilt floods our hearts.  So much has washed away.

Yet, it is spring, and the songs of robins fill the evening air.

All things move in cycles – seasons, nations, planets, lives – to rhythms that are beyond our knowing or control.  Our part is but to witness them, in wonder, and to give ourselves, in trust, to the dance.  We know, after all, far too little to judge.  The most we can do is to learn.

Wisdom comes in increments.  It is born of compassion and nurtured by love.  And even when it seems stern, love is beneath and within it all and is the Yes that spins the cycles, whispering to the deepest parts of us that we are firmly within its embrace.

And though the world has shifted and its tilt floods our hearts, the sun pours its golden light upon our evening waters.  The world births another spring and robins sing their song: be at peace, dear children; you are loved.

The earth turns and the sky sings its evening benediction, its glory lifting us into the vast assurance of the great Yes.  Let the winds of peace blow through your heart.

Despite the darkness, all is well and as it is meant to be.  Trust your longing; it points the way.  What your heart most deeply desires is already granted.  Be at peace.

This is the song the wind sings.  Let it carry your hope to the sky and show you the stars that glitter in your larger home.

As the last weeks of winter spread themselves over the land, the trees fall into a world of dreams.

Soon their sap will begin to rise, their buds to swell.  Soon the birds will come to sing in the early dawns.

But now, while the snow dances softly around them, they can indulge in their dreams.

They dream the kaleidoscopic colors of earth’s sky and of her jeweled insects.  They dream of the symphonies of the birds who play hide and seek in their leaves, and of the burst of life as new birds break through the colored shells of round eggs, high in their leafy branches.

Their dreams are both memory and rehearsal.  They pool with the dreams of the ancients whose shadows fall across the centuries.  They inform the tightly curled seeds, still sleeping deeply on the very edges of being.

They slide down their roots into the rocks and soil and mix with the dreams of the hibernating animals.  They rise up to the sky and merge with the snow, and fall into the dreams of lovers and babies, singing rock-a-bye, sweet ones, rock-a-bye.

In the last weeks of winter, the trees dream their dreams and the woods sleeps in their sheltering peace.

Every liquid moment is given for your joy, for your comfort, for your peace.  Even when you cannot hear it, the Great Yes is singing for you.  Even when you cannot see it, it is pouring out its light.

Even if you doubt it, suppose it is true.  Suppose it is only a matter of letting go of disbelief, of allowing yourself to suppose.

Suppose you could simply choose to inhale it. Suppose you could breathe it into your lungs, feel it coursing through your blood, bathing your cells, dissolving all your brittleness.

Imagine that it’s hidden in the photons, shooting throughout the cosmos, bombarding your DNA.  Imagine that it knows you, that you are the whole purpose of its being, called into existence so that it could share its joy.  Just suppose.

Here in this lovely mid-winter now, in this earth-breath where the stream flows open beneath the rusty spent leaves of the young oak, where white sycamores reach to the sky, and the snow lies in rounded mounds above the singing winters, I find reason enough to keep on.

Here, in this vast lonely landscape, with my boots kicking up powdered diamonds and wee birds chirping in the trees, I watch the play of light and shadow and need nothing more.

The slow melodious rhythm of it all wraps me in its wisdom; the clarity of its light heals my heart.  Here in this lovely singing now, in this perfect moment, peace dances glorious and free, even though it is winter.

.

.

It’s all stardust, you know. All of it.

The first idea was so brilliant that when it burst, laughing with joy, into the deep, cold void, it shattered into infinite bits of starlight, each mirroring all the others.

Dancing across the emptiness, the tiny starflakes filled it with singing patterns, each a reflection, in its own way, of the original, living idea.

The emptiness stretches out beyond forever, of course, and so the particles of joy are dancing still, creating all the patterns of energy and matter that form the worlds and everything in them.

I looked out my winter window tonight and saw them, glistening, and raining like stars across the emptiness of the night.  And the night was still enough that I heard their song, and its harmony was filled with comfort and a deep, velvet peace.

Here in this cup of a valley, the afternoon light falls as softly as snow.  Look how tenderly it wraps itself around each twig, each crystalline flake, even those in the shadows.  Look how it beams, golden as a promise, from the hillside.

In the invisible air, silent waves rush from the towers, crowded with the day’s mad memes.

You would think with all those tongues wagging, one would speak a syllable of peace here and there, utter a word of clarity.  They’re few and far between.

But here in the valley, the soft light falls.

Birds huddle like balls of wool in the trees’ branches, hidden, their songs rolling inside them, keeping them warm.

Tracks from the feet of small animals dot the snow with their round designs.  Deer snuggle in nests made of grasses.

Here, at least, is clarity.  Here, peace finds a refuge in the light.  And here I stand, my heart filled with thanksgiving, bathed in serenity, knowing that, beneath the tumult, all is well and each of us is known, every molecule of us, and understood, and loved.