Tag: peace

All I Need to Know

I have always loved the phrase that many Native Americans use to refer to God and all of life: “The Great Mystery.” There is such wisdom and spiritual surrender in those words, a quiet acknowledgment that the universe and our place in it cannot be fully understood by the human mind. This wondrous mystery is what I experience when I walk alone in Nature or stare up at the stars at night.

Wonder, and joy at the beauty. Yet, for me there has also always been an element of sadness in contemplating eternity and my place in it. As a child I felt great fear when thinking of my life within infinity and the “world going on forever.” It was only in my adult spiritual quest that I came to a deepening and expansion of my awareness and a loosening of the fear. In “accepting what is” I found solace for my sorrow. When I stopped trying to find an explanation for life, the closed doors of my perception opened to the experience of Spirit, my soul’s essence and what is at the heart of all existence.

Even at times of emotional and physical challenge (the death of my parents; treatment for breast cancer), the presence of Spirit has sustained me. There will always be a mixture of thoughts and feelings when I look at the world that surrounds me: love of life as well as grief at its transitory, impermanent nature. When sadness arises, I have learned over the years that the wisest response is surrender: accepting those sad feelings and realizing they are only one part of who I am. It is my human identity that feels fear or grief; my soul witnesses all of life peacefully, without question or judgment. Within that peace, I let everything go and live in the Mystery. I don’t need to know all the answers; I just remain open to experiencing the beauty and wonder available to me in every moment.

I recently had an experience that highlighted this wisdom. I am an avid birdwatcher, and every year I visit Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the spring bird migration. Hundreds of migrating birds come through the cemetery because of its beautiful habitat, and local birders are there to greet them. On one particular morning, after days of rain, I walked inside the front gate and paused to get out my binoculars. A man standing nearby enthusiastically commented on the beauty of the day and how he was certain the end of the rain would bring all the birds in. I agreed with him, and as I started to walk away, he added, “I don’t know much about science or exact bird identification, but I know how beautiful and special each one is.” “And that’s all you need to know,” I replied.

 At that, he burst, quite loudly, into song: “That may be all I need to know….” He laughed delightedly as he finished and asked me if I knew the song. I smiled and said, “Yes, I do.” So he sang it all over again, practically vibrating with joy. We then wished each other a wonderful day, and each went our way. As I turned to look back at him, he was still smiling and singing to himself. What sweet synchronicity in encountering this rather eccentric earth angel who reminded me of the wisdom of life’s beauty. I am surrounded by that beauty with every step. And, truly, that is all I need to know, ever.

Reflections on a Board Game

Anne and I have played Scrabble regularly for years. We like the mind exercise involved in forming words to fit on the board in often difficult places. Recently we bought a new board game called Wingspan, which I had read about online. It was a bit complicated to learn, but now we love it. Players create small bird sanctuaries on their individual boards, using bird cards, bonus cards, food and egg representations, and colorful markers and dice. In the course of four rounds of play, each player fills their habitats, and points accumulated from various plays and cards determine the winner. Overall, we are fairly evenly matched, with Anne usually winning more frequently at Scrabble and me winning more often at Wingspan. Occasionally we tie!

So, board games are fun, right? Relaxing as well as stimulating to the mind. But could they also be seen as a reflection of life, something we could learn from? This way of looking at them occurred to me recently when I was repeatedly losing every Scrabble game. It seemed that I was always drawing letters that did not make words—all vowels or all consonants. Meanwhile, Anne was sailing along forming five- to seven-letter words, often with triple scores. After the sixth or seventh game like this, I began to feel frustrated and angry, as if it was more than just bad luck. When I then lost a Wingspan game in similar fashion, it seemed like the last straw: God was literally “stacking the cards against me”!

As soon as that thought passed through my mind, something clicked, and I realized that each game was a reflection of life, and together they were demonstrating to me a spiritual teaching that I thought I already knew by heart: Accept what is. If you resist whatever is occurring, you will be angry and upset. In a board game and in life. And so it is. Spirit has such imaginative and humorous ways of showing us life’s truths and exactly how they work. As long as I continued to be annoyed at the way a game was unfolding, I would be unhappy—and furious that I couldn’t control the outcome. So it is with life. Accept whatever comes up, and you will feel peaceful. Resist, and you will grumble and complain throughout your days on Earth.

When I came to see that Spirit and my soul were playfully reminding me of this deep truth and that it applied everywhere all the time, I smiled—and then laughed out loud. Life flows if you allow it to be exactly as it is. Board games do too. The secret is seeing them that way. Who knew that Scrabble was hiding spiritual wisdom in all those letters?!

P.S. The evening after I had this insight, I won the Scrabble game (not that it matters… ha!)

Words and Silence

This may sound strange since I’m a writer, but sometimes I feel that words and language can weigh us down and overcomplicate our lives. At least as they are traditionally used: to argue and debate, to delineate and deduce, to explain and edify, to compile histories and construct theories. Politics, science, philosophy, religion. Even spirituality can veer off into wordiness. Some books and teachings engage the mind more than the soul. The deepest, most spiritual response to life is often just sitting or standing silently, in reverence. To look up at the trees and see God. To listen to birdsong and hear Spirit’s voice. No words required.

Of course, not all words run to excess or cause mental fatigue. Some poetry and prose can arise from a quiet space of being in the world. When I read Mary Oliver, Ann Patchett, or Mark Nepo, I feel a connection to the core of all life, Nature, and humanity, clearly expressed from the heart. Haiku is the simplest form of poetry. It pares language down to the basics and in doing so allows the reader infinite space to receive. Such writing engenders inner peace instead of a distracted, busy mind.

In one of Ann Patchett’s novels, two men from different countries who don’t speak each other’s language play chess for hours in silence. The tension and danger that surrounds them is broken by the peace that arises from their shared silence. I’ve seen chess players in a crowded city square also play in silence, those gathered around them silently watching. A small circle of stillness forms in an otherwise noisy area. How many other activities could we do quietly, creating peace in the world around us? Walking or birdwatching, for example. What about preparing meals or listening to music? We could in theory extend the list to everything. How would the world shift, without one word spoken?

Perhaps this is not completely realistic, but yet not wholly impossible, on a small scale, in our individual lives. If we hold stillness within us, outer noise falls away. Small talk evaporates. Busyness slows down. Our minds slow down. It suddenly doesn’t seem that necessary to narrate our every move or comment on everything (aloud or via texting, social media, etc.). In the space that opens up, we can rest in our own inner presence, without verbal interference.

Words can be a key part of our daily lives, and language a bridge to communicate with others. It is enjoyable and comforting to share our thoughts and feelings, bringing us closer together. But talking is not always necessary, and if we allow silence to expand within us and outside of us, what we do say becomes poetry or music arising from our souls. Gently touching the hearts of those around us and then dissolving into stillness again. Wouldn’t you love to live in a world like that? Take a deep breath, and don’t say a word. There you are.

Miracle Earth

Stop for a minute and consider where you are. You, along with billions of other living beings, live on a planet that rotates around a giant ball of fire at exactly the distance that allows for life to occur on it. Other planets circling the same fiery ball are not positioned so that life as we know it can be sustained. On Earth, the greens of the land and the blues of the oceans arise from the perfect blending of temperature and light. The lengths of the days and nights and the seasonal changes unfold seamlessly. That in itself is a miracle. Each day we take morning, afternoon, and night for granted. We take the warmth of the sun for granted. We take the air that we breathe for granted. Yet all of it is miraculous.

And fragile. We are repeatedly counseled to care for this Earth with tenderness, as if she were our Mother. As she is. Without her (and Father Sun), we would not exist. This small blue and green marble in the midst of millions of galaxies and universes is unique. A tiny cell in the cosmos. An expression of universal consciousness, as are each of us who live here. Is this not a miracle to keep us in awe for the rest of our days here on Earth?

Sometimes I imagine myself floating among the stars, multiverses stretching in every direction beyond my ability to even fully conceive of them. I picture myself part of an infinite tapestry of light and beingness. Eternity unleashed. Such an imagined vision used to frighten me—and at times still does. Yet, more and more, I feel the miraculous beauty of it, and I am filled with peace. Peace beyond understanding or definition. I experienced such boundless peace in the recovery room after breast cancer surgery two years ago; I felt myself held by a Presence that both calmed and comforted me.  Ever since, it seems not that far away. If I allow that awareness to arise from soul memory, then everything shines with that grace, that divine peace, that miracle. There is nothing else.

If you open your heart wide enough (or it is cracked open by circumstance), you will be gifted with your own version of the miraculous, and it will never leave you. Each one of us on this planet is destined to receive this wonder: an entire universe present in every seemingly small detail of our expansive, infinitely unfolding lives.

And you don’t have to go through surgery to experience it! Take a walk through the spring woods, look up at the starry night sky, watch the brilliant colors of a sunset, or share a sacred moment of connection with a loved one. It’s all there, right before you. Spirit finds you at just the right moment in your life and opens the door wide. You were born on planet Earth to be part of the miracle.

What Is Destiny?

The idea of destiny scares many people. They fear losing individual control over their lives, the “free will” they’ve always been told they have (in the Western world anyway): “If I can’t change the course of my life, am I a victim of circumstance? Am I a prisoner of fate?” Thoughts such as these can trap us in polarity and a single-minded view of the world. Words are like frames really; if you change the frame, the meaning changes.

What if we called destiny something else? Use a verb frame instead of a noun. How about: Destiny is flowing with the river of the universe. It is dancing with the divine music of the spheres. Living from the soul in pure loving awareness. Or all of the above. Instead of a closed door, destiny could be an open field, the one your soul and God designed together for you to play in in this lifetime. Destiny could just be another name for you and God as One.

We humans want to believe we can single-handedly control our daily lives, avoiding pain and hanging onto happiness. We fear getting lost in suffering. Yet no one can live a human life without experiencing the full spectrum of emotions, from sadness to joy. The secret is that we don’t have to suffer as we feel these things. If we open our minds and our hearts to a fully expanded soul view of the universe, then perhaps we can better see that we are one small, but essential, part of an intricately interwoven tapestry of light, color, and sound, which was created long ago (in human terms) and is continuing to unfold.

What if destiny is actually the supernovas, galaxies, and stardust from which we were born exploding across the cosmos to manifest as Planet Earth and you in this moment of human time and space? What if destiny is the spark of life itself within you? It is born, expands into shining beingness, and then gradually fades back into the universal matter from which it arose. All of it extraordinarily beautiful and magical and over which we have no control. You can only observe the unfolding in awe and wonder. This is human destiny. Within that is celebration not grief if seen through the lens of divine Presence. You are a miracle within a miracle.

Peace of mind and inner calm arise when we allow acceptance of life the way it is to fill our conscious awareness. This is not really alien to our human selves because deep within us is the core of living spirit (soul) which is peace itself. It is this Spirit that flows through the galaxies and through us and connects everything in oneness. We and the stars are destined to shine together. Accept every moment of your life, and light will radiate from you, and the idea of control will dissolve completely. Then you will know destiny as the gift of love and grace that it is.