Category: Spiritual

The Most Beautiful Place on Earth

I’ve been visiting it regularly for more than 40 years: Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1831 as the nation’s first garden cemetery, it remains a place of natural beauty and peace for those mourning loved ones as well as those who come to walk quietly and appreciate the diverse landscape. Old oaks and maples, flowering trees and bushes, butterfly garden and wildflower meadow, ponds, dells, and hills all combine to create a vibrant habitat and nature sanctuary. To me, in every season, it truly is the most beautiful place on Earth: the deep greens of summer, the red/gold/orange leaves of fall, the sparkling snows of winter—but especially the rainbow colors in springtime.

Spring! The word carries within it the feeling and the movement of the season. My heart literally springs with joy when I walk through Mt. Auburn’s gates and see the new yellow-green leaves on the trees and the daffodils and narcissus springing into bloom. These are special days of excitement and joy for me, too, because of the annual spring bird migration: a vast diversity of birds flying marathon miles from Central and South America to North America. Many of them I see only once a year as they stop on their flights north to nest and raise their young. Each sighting is a cause for celebration. Yay—you made it, sweet little being!

At the end of April this year, I made my first spring trip across town to Mt. Auburn, and as I walked along Indian Ridge to Auburn Lake (also known as Spectacle Pond), tears filled my eyes at the beauty of the azaleas bursting with red and white blossoms and the magnolias covered with huge pink blooms. And then the birdsong! Warblers, tanagers, thrushes, catbirds, and the whistling notes of the orioles, all of them virtuosos of song. No human symphony orchestra could be more varied and beautiful. Every year I feel this way. Every year I know I have walked into paradise on Earth, a gift of a lifetime.

Machu Picchu and the Napali Coast are spectacularly stunning, as are the Southwest’s red-rock deserts and the Caribbean’s turquoise seas. So many wonders in the world, all extraordinary—and yet, it is a small, quiet nature cemetery in Massachusetts that moves me most, heart and soul. I feel Spirit everywhere there. My parents are with me, as is every friend I’ve ever shared a walk there with. And every migrating bird I’ve seen in every year since the 1980s, each special and unrepeatable.

The memories are countless, all of them interwoven with the course of my life—and continuing into the future. One of the reasons that Anne and I moved back to Massachusetts after two years in Florida was for those longtime memories of people and places here. Including our wedding at Auburn Lake with friends and family present exactly ten years ago this June! The saying goes that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” True, but for me it’s in the heart of the beholder. There is no beautiful place on Earth that touches my heart more than Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

What’s the Rush?

Why are we often hurrying from one place to another, from one experience to another? Where are we going, really? Your life span and the ultimate finish line (what we think of as death) will remain exactly the same no matter how fast you go. There is so much more at play here, like an entire universe. You and I perceive ourselves moving through time, but time is only a human-created concept. It’s as if we are on a treadmill at the gym watching a TV screen that shows scene after scene of unfolding events, some mesmerizing, some boring, some happy, some sad. We think we are moving with the events, but we are actually running in place. We believe we are participants with choice and control, but we are observers at the soul level. And we have a larger destiny within Spirit.

This is life, and there is no hurry about any of it. Our souls came to Earth for the experience. God experiences human life through us, and we experience God through human life. We are colorful pieces of glass in a giant divine kaleidoscope of light and sound. Magical, beautiful, fathomless. No reason to speed up or slow down. It’s all unfolding with absolute synchronicity, beyond your ability to make adjustments to what is occurring…or to pinpoint a destination. If you relax and let go, you experience each moment without any need to either rush it or make it last. It is perfect just as is.

Labyrinths, which wind circularly from a beginning point towards a center and then back out again to the start, have been viewed historically as life paths that people symbolically walk for insight and awareness. From one’s Source back again to one’s Source. Or Spirit taking form, journeying through life, and then returning to Spirit once more. I have walked several labyrinths in different locations, and there is definitely a deeper sense of moving and yet remaining in one place. The beginning is the same as the end. That is, birth is the same as death. We travel in time while remaining timeless. We are both finite and infinite. Mortal yet eternal.

Difficult to describe what is essentially beyond description. This is the landscape within which I continually find myself these days. I am moving while standing still. And trying to find language for the indescribable motionless motion of my life, of all of our lives. Poets and songwriters come the closest to capturing the feeling. In the musical flow of poetry and song, listeners often experience moments of touching the intangible, inhaling the transcendent.

It is also possible in the simplicity of daily life, through slow, conscious breathing. With each breath, you and I encounter God in all we see as well as in each other. If we are in no hurry, we can meet within the timeless. Rushing, we miss each other…and everything else. In one single moment is life, death, and eternity. Pause, breathe, and that awareness opens up inside you and all around you.

Signs

It has been my experience that the universe often sends us signs to light our way or guide us on our life journeys. If one unexpectedly appears, I pay attention, often with shivers of synchronicity and a bit of awe. When Anne and I were searching for a new place to live, we went to countless open houses throughout areas north, west, and south of Boston. It was interesting but also frustrating because we didn’t see anything that was exactly right—and we lost the bid on one we really liked. As the end of our apartment lease drew closer (and we knew our rent was going up significantly), the pressure we felt increased.

We continued to look, and then there was one new open house at a condo community we had previously looked at but thought was a bit far away. Since this new condo seemed perfect for us, we decided to visit again. The night before the open house, just as I was going to sleep, I heard an eastern screech owl calling outside the window. I had not heard one for several years, and never near that particular location. I listened to its haunting call for several minutes before it stopped. Hearing it in the deep silent darkness felt almost sacred. The next day, we drove to the open house, and as we walked through the rooms, my eye was caught by a small painting on the wall: it was an eastern screech owl. Immediately, I had a profound inner sense that we were meant to live there. And, indeed, that is exactly what happened. Our bid was accepted, and we moved in several months ago.

Anne and I believed the owl was a sign for us, a signal pointing the way. That has helped us as we acclimated to a completely new town and very different surroundings. It has been difficult at times to let go of the familiar and jump into the unknown, even if it seems right. Interestingly, it’s the birds and the trees that continue to reassure us that we have made the right choice. The woods around the condo community are filled with birds, which in turn fill my heart with joy because I had been concerned that there wouldn’t be birds nearby when we moved. Especially robins, one of my most beloved birds.

I need not have worried. In fact, robins became the symbolic welcoming committee in the months after our move. Entire flocks of them flew overhead and landed in the nearby trees and on the ground, even in January. They ate juniper berries from the evergreens and foraged around through the leaves for insects. On any given day, I would encounter a dozen or more, which of course made me feel happy and also more “at home.”

As winter turned gradually to spring, house finches and song sparrows began their spring songs. The loud cheery call of the bright red male cardinal filled the air each morning from the very top of trees I passed on my walks. Deep in the woods I heard titmice, blue jays, goldfinches, and canyon wrens calling. Red-winged blackbirds arrived, heralding the beginning of spring migration, and their musical trills added to the orchestral mix. The presence of this large wooded area was a magnet for so many kinds of birds, and as the weeks passed, more and more spring migrants arrived (including Baltimore orioles!).

All of this was immensely reassuring to me, and once again I felt, as I had with the eastern screech owl, that the birds were giving us repeated, unmistakable “signs” that this was truly our home, as it was theirs. When a robin flies to a small tree next to where I’m standing and looks me in the eye with that friendly, intelligent robin gaze, I trust the perfect unfolding of my life here among the birds.

Writing as Release

I have expressed myself through writing since I was a teenager. I always kept a journal, and after college I began to publish articles and poetry in feminist and political publications. Later my writing became more focused on spiritual exploration. In 2012 I began an ongoing online blog in which I write about a variety of subjects, mostly framed within my own life experiences. I write both to give voice to my inner thoughts and feelings and to connect with others. Only recently have I begun to see my writing as a way of processing all that I am living through day to day and year to year. It helps me to resolve my feelings and to see a bigger picture.

In multiple situations and events, such as moving state to state or the passing of friends/family, I have written my way to peace of mind in the midst of uncertainty or sadness. In the last 12+ years, I have felt the presence of spirit within the words that come through me to be written. It is not my mind that chooses what to say but my soul. It is guiding me to align with an inner peace that always exists within; it is showing me wisdom beyond anything I could discover with mental efforting. When I let go completely, the sentences flow from somewhere outside my physical form. In that letting go, I experience my life flowing in the same way.

More and more now, I see that the realm of infinite consciousness is the source of all I am and all I express as a human being. Soul presence embodied on planet Earth within what we have named time and space. Sounds nebulous perhaps but my experience of “something greater” in my life becomes more vivid and all-encompassing with each passing year. Especially when I sit down to write. Often it is the ups and downs of daily life that move me to sit at the computer and allow that greater something to speak through me. Ultimately that is exactly what brings me comfort and release. At the deepest level it is spiritual connection, or God awareness.

Not everyone thinks of life in terms of a God or Source energy. To some, belief in divine intelligence is a human invention and arises from our own fears and inability to accept uncertainty. Perhaps. Yet throughout millennia, sages and explorers of consciousness have come to profound wisdom about the nature of life/death and eternity within a spiritual framework. Actually, at this level, words and explanations become unimportant. What is discovered/experienced is entirely outside the realm of language and interpretation. What my/your soul experiences is nonverbal.

So then how does writing come into it? For me, as I write, something within me translates the nonverbal experience of God and infinity into human language. It is not literal but an approximation, meant to evoke the feeling of soul connection, of heart-centered awareness. A living metaphor perhaps, just as a poem or piece of music brings to life some ineffable something within us. Not to put too grandiose a spin on it, but this is the closest I can come to describing what writing is to me. It is a sacred activity. It brings me home to my own soul and the soul of all things. It releases what I have held separate and makes it one with all beings and Being itself.

Happy Now

Life is a mystery, a composite, a kaleidoscope. You win, you lose; you cry, you laugh; you grieve, you celebrate. The door is closed; the window is open. You can go through life experiencing only one of these possibilities, or you can experience them all. Most of us are in the latter group, but sometimes we get stuck on one side or another of a polarity. We need to be reminded that life on Earth has many sides. That’s what our loved ones do for us.

A month or so ago, a longtime friend of Anne’s and mine died suddenly of a heart attack. He and his husband had been together more than 40 years, just as Anne and I have. It was shattering to hear the news, especially since we recently lost another friend who had been with her wife almost 50 years. I found myself worrying about Anne and me, as well as about everyone we know—future illnesses and deaths, impending grief and sadness. I was stuck on the side of fear and depression, which can happen, especially at night (“night mind” we call it in our house). This was when Anne stepped in with the perfect comment: “We have plenty of time to be depressed in the future. Let’s be happy now.” I laughed. Thank you, dear Anne.

Such a wise truth, that. One I sometimes forget when my emotions sweep through me. I inherited both sides of optimist/worrier outlooks from my parents. For example, I can recall my father staring out the window one morning and saying, “I hope that’s not poison ivy on that tree.” My mother, on the other hand, pointed out a nearby trumpet vine with bright-orange flowers. They both had worries, but my mother’s inclination was always to put a positive spin on things. My dad used humor for that spin. He was a very funny man. When I was tearfully suffering through an existential dilemma of not wanting to die or live forever, he paused thoughtfully and finally said (with a twinkle in his eye), “Well, you just can’t please some people.” We both laughed. My parents looked to each other for the gifts of humor and positivity. Anne and I do too. Together we give one another balance at key moments.

I can’t control life’s vacillations, but I am learning to accept them. When upsetting events occur, I rely on loving friends and family for a shoulder to cry on or laughter to balance the tears. With time, a larger overview brings perspective. From my soul’s point of view, life and death are one, a guided journey through infinity. The course of our lives takes us to that vantage point. Every life event opens the door wider to the cosmos and our place in it. It’s not easy. In fact, it’s excruciatingly painful at times if a parent, friend, or life partner dies. Yet, in the midst of our grief, there are often one or two human angels who appear, to provide solace and peace of mind.

I have encountered such angels—sometimes strangers, sometimes friends—at times of loss in my life. Even now, as I feel apprehension for the future aging and passing of those I love (and myself), there is a part of me that trusts in something greater than I can even imagine with my human mind. It is my soul that trusts, beyond all lifetimes, in the presence of Spirit (or God) in all things. Love as well as sorrow can open our hearts to the soul’s wisdom, the soul’s light. In loving one another, we experience all of life, and it passes through us with such divine beauty that how can we be anything but grateful? And “happy now.”