Responding Quietly

Cool morning. A very light rain falls in the half-light. A large construction vehicle floods the Temple garden with noise though it’s not yet five thirty in the morning. Birds sing sharply, adding the descant to the rumbling bass.

The nasturtiums in the corner wiggle ever so slightly in response. Is it the sonic vibration or the unseen breeze that moves them? It you didn’t look carefully, you’d think they were still. Easy to miss this subtle responsiveness of all things to each other. Now that I look closer, I see each round leaf and each golden blossom moves independently—each one positioned and shaped to dance with the winds of its unique life. One plant with a multitude of separately sensing lives.

I feel tired and slow this morning. The great winds of conviction and inspiration that sometimes blow through me are quiet. I try not to panic and cover over. I trust something smaller. I wait and listen louder. I begin to sense the zephyrs that move silently and leave only the slightest trace.

I look around me and try to find my way into where I am. I sense my place. My weather app said ‘foggy’ this morning. I didn’t realize it was talking about my inner weather. Curriculum this morning: moving slowly in the fog. I may not be thrilled about it, but it’s better than pretending.

I started up the weed-whacker yesterday for the first time this year. The gas-powered noise-maker started right up. I was so excited to have it when I first bought it ten years ago. But I like things fairly disorderly here in the garden so I rarely use it. I can’t tell whether it’s because I don’t like noise and hard work or it’s really an aesthetic choice.

I appreciate formal gardens with nothing out of place, but I don’t find them relaxing. When nature is used for show, I appreciate the mastery of the gardener and the work of those who maintain it, but it doesn’t help me cross the space between me and the natural world. The plants and paths are used to express the pattern in the gardener’s mind. It’s simpler, more geometric and sometimes easier to understand and appreciate, but rarely inviting to my soul.

I like the wildness of things to be a full partner in the design. Of course, the wildness of life is present within even the most formal garden, all you have to do is look close enough. The branching of each of the row of carefully trimmed shrubs is actually quite different and each of the blossoms of one hundred tulips is a different slightly different shade from its neighbor.

But I like it to be more obvious – where you sometimes can’t tell what is intentional and what just happens and aren’t quite sure who’s really in charge. This feels more encouraging to me—this intertwining of plans and actual life. So much of the content of our lives comes from the billions of actions that have come before this moment—ours and others. The past fully invades the present to constrain and guide what is to come. And each moment invites us to participate fully. Each action creates the world that we move into.

What we choose to do and what we choose to pay attention to joins with all that has come before in an interactive feedback loop that we call a life. Each moment is wild and constrained at the same time. Not a problem.

The leaves of the nasturtium like to bounce and jiggle. Their morning exercise in the twilight waiting for receive the photon packets of light later to power their green factories. I bounce and jiggle in my mind, learning to be still enough to catch the small breezes of delight that pass through.

A two-inch hummingbird comes by on her morning rounds. Buzzing like a small diesel, she carefully sips the nectar from one or two golden blossoms then wheels away. I sit still, then go on tapping on the keyboard.

Personal Practice – Sit still for a few minutes with your eyes closed. Let your mind go dreamy. Now open your eyes. Look around notice what catches your attention. Whatever it is, spend a few more minutes just looking carefully at it. Notice its shapes and colors, textures and sounds (if any). Let yourself sense the qualities of what you see. Imagine yourself as this object. What does it feel like from the inside? What might the wisdom of this thing be? Imagine that it has some tip for you today. What is the wisdom tip this object has to give you? [aka ‘flirts’ from Process Work and Arny Mindell]