One day I was feeling
rug-flat
demoralized because of a job-related misunderstanding that had been
building up over time and was beginning to look irresolvable. In
that feeling as I left a meeting with a well-meaning but chronically mis-informed
supervisor, my mind turned to this work that otherwise owned my life and
I wondered if it had a prayer of a chance. If something as
relatively [oughta' be] simple as communication with people in my
workaday world could be so challenging, how could I imagine to hope that
this huge, virtually unseen project could have a meaningful impact on --
I dare to say -- something on the order of a world full of people?
I thought how un-far this project had gotten
over years of time. That mood poisoned my every thought.
This is an obvious example that we definitely
live out of our feelings more than our thoughts! I had never been so convinced that maybe
my heart's calling just didn't have a chance after all -- An utter sense of
failure just took over.
The grip of this angst was so strong, I did something I had never done
before. I forwarded
the phones and walked away from my responsibilities for a while, going to a quiet room
to re-gather my bearings. In my
restlessness and near-despair, I sat down and picked up a magazine
with mostly pretty nature scenes, thinking if I could just
put my mind on something else, that would help. I could not even
connect with Spirit in any way in that moment, and so this was the best
I could do. Absently I thumbed through nearly the whole magazine,
a monthly, picturesque tour of North Carolina, and the distraction
of looking began to calm me down. But nothing in it really grabbed
my attention except for an advertisement. But even that didn't
stop me enough to understand why it attracted me ... just another pretty
picture. Reaching the end of the periodical, I started to put it
down, but something nagged at me to go back to that one page. Then
I really read the words that hadn't quite gotten through the first time,
which were, "She had a vision. We helped her get
her site." [... !!!!]
Amazingly, I was still so upset and submerged in the biochemistry of
self-torture, and speaking of distracted, that this did not at first
connect -- even this second time around. I literally put the magazine down, thinking
vaguely that something about that was not letting go my attention.
The image was sharp in my mind, and I found the words running
repetitively like a sing-songy jingle as I crossed the room and started
back down the hall .. when it hit me. It
stopped me in my tracks. I returned to the room and flipped
through to the page. This time with my full attention. It
was as if Spirit came to me at one of the most literally dispirited
moments of recent years to give me a huge hug of encouragement!
Thank goodness, it was a long-recycled publication -- I tore out the page and
sailed through the rest of the day with a lighter heart and step.
What a Thought -- imagining to look back from years down the road to
experience the 'We' who helped me get my site! It took time for it
to begin to sink in enough to become grounded in my inner being.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a truth in this hope if I will not ...
give ... up.
But
there's more to the tale.
Weeks passed. I finally reached a place where I sensed I had done
all I could do toward the preliminary work of building the site that I
hoped would attract others to partner with me in the next stage of
helping this work achieve all it can be. In spite of my usual
monkey-wrench perfectionism, I felt REALLY GOOD, even excited, about
what has been created thus far. This for me is B-I-G!! and
truly years of work to reach this moment of feeling finally able to let
it become a fully collaborative venture that would require many others
to bring to life. The joy-giving advert had been taped by my
computer where I spent most of my waking hours every day working on this
web vision, and it frequently lifted my spirits
and renewed my hope.
I decided to photograph it and put it on my computer, thinking one day,
if indeed this work does thrive, it would help me and maybe even others
remember just how Spirit lovingly graces us during our often darkest
moments. That's when another line on the page leaped out at me for
the first time, making me feel I had been struck by lightning --
again! I will leave it to you to discover it in the picture
below, even as, you could say, it 'discovered' me.
Futzing
with this guilty little pleasure when I should be blazingly bent on
writing letters--letters--LETTERS!! ...
I suddenly had this image of myself [anyone of us, really], as a very
young child at an age that finds it quite comfortable to hold hands
and to be led. I am walking with a great Elder who is so
tall in my picture that I only see hir from waist-high down, in this
long, draping, moss-grey garb, such as a religious might wear.
We are alone and traversing a nearly-to-the-horizon wide valley ringed
with mountains -- an unbroken terrain of lively and colorful,
sun-soaked meadow filled with all sorts of marvels and mysteries for a
small child. I am constantly stopping to look at this and that,
letting a caterpillar walk onto my finger or hunkering down to glimpse
a passing rabbit disappearing into the brambled, light-limned maze in
the heart of this glorious place, and staring wide-eyed for long, luscious moments into so much
beauty! My beloved companion gives me generous leeway to do
this, but every so often heshe reaches for me once more to urge me
farther along the trail toward what feels like Something Unspeakably
Wonderful, if I will but come along. Hir patience has been
endlessly bountiful and in Hir Presence I feel deeply
cherished.
Suddenly
like the page that stopped me earlier ...
... once its contents could break through my little preoccupations, I
am more awake to wonder. Ahead, barely inside the lip of the
valley's terminus before us -- I am looking intently in the direction
of our destination -- there rests an enormous and amorphous complexity
of half-formed geometries of living lights! Impossible to
comprehend their singular potential for meaning. There's 'that
feeling' again .. only now do I realize I've been trying to find the
right words for it for months. You know how it is when you tell
a joke, and it hasn't quite connected -- that moment in-between; it's
already a done deal and yet the lightning bolt hasn't found ground in the consciousness of your listeners. That's the discomfiting
instant in the frame of time, but it doesn't explain the feeling.
If you have ever been very near to a lightning strike, you will know
there is an instant before the hit when all the air is electrified or
like all the air is suddenly entirely sucked out of the
area, creating a vacuum-m-m-m-mmm .. -- [[That's the feeling]] -- then
WHaPPPPpPPPpppPppPPPPPP!!!!
[Oh, and THEN you get the thunder. Maybe that's Spirit [choose
your favorite Name] laughing -- Hir joke has been sprung! And all the fuzzy
potentials that buzzed so livingly before are instantly collapsed into a
new reality unfolding.]
In this strange and magical moment of breath-gone-electric 'ahhh-'
before the 'HA!', I sense again the thrill of revelation about to
connect. Hands comfortingly clasped once more, off we
go! What adventure awaits in the Bright Unknown before us??
Here, take my other hand -- I think we are about to find
out! ...
