RAM DASS WAS RIGHT

                                     

This forest where I live was once a temperate rainforest and seems to be returning to that state. Shower after shower of sometimes drippy, sometimes steady rain has been with us for days.  The mountains have disappeared in the distance, and clouds are in the treetops just down the hill.  Green is heavy everywhere. A damp chill in the air is feels nice after the brutal and unusual heat of the past weeks, but I find myself wishing for some Carolina blue and a sunshine relief from wetness and fog. What is here though is moisture that fills the water table and my pond, causes weak trees to fall and mud in the barn..mixed blessings.

While I have loved my adventures and my curiosity, I am finally bone weary of discontent, of wanting to be somewhere else, someone else, in some other time doing some new thing. In my seventieth year now, it seems a good idea, even an opportunity, to plant my contentment right where I am.  In adulthood, I have lived in six states, eleven houses, had a couple of husbands and untold numbers of dreams, notions and impulses, some followed to fruition and many more discarded. I have tried numerous paths to God, only to learn that just stopping where I am is where IT is.  

As I talk with friends I find that many of us have had this experience of lifelong chasing the next shiny thing into the daydream and losing much of our lives in the process.  I have stayed in this beloved place that I am married to for many years now, but the restlessness still aggravates. The seductive fantasy of a new love beckons.. a smaller more manageable property, a new medium for working with color, a new poetic form and on and on.  It has been fun but now seems fragmented and exhausting.

In some things I have been faithful and gone deep. Those times have been the source of real joy and learning.. loving what I have and knowing the fullness of enough.. looking around and really experiencing the grace that is my life.  In the years I have left, I want to cultivate the ability to surrender, to settle in, to look closely and clearly at what is in front of me now even the changes, even the losses.  I want to experience the essence that is only found in the stillness of here...

the rain, the drippy green, a sleepy dog and the fog..