Gazing in the Mirror

January 28 - The Cry of a Baby

Don't stand unmoving outside
the door of a crying baby
whose only desire is to touch you.
Go to your baby. Go to your baby
a million times. Demonstrate that
people can be trusted, that the
environment can be trusted, that
we live in a benign universe.
~ Peggy O'Mara

Spirit will never fail us if we
never fail to believe in Its goodness
and Its responsiveness.
~ Ernest Holmes

We've been watching the final seasons of the 1990s hit television program known as The X-Files on dvd from Netflix lately. At the end of Season 8, the female FBI agent, Dana Scully, gives birth to a son. At the beginning of Season 9, she is seen caring for her baby in that precious, delicious phase of having a newborn that is full of peaceful moments of sublime beauty as reflected in a sleeping infant's carefree face and the moments when a mom responds immediately to her baby's cry.

I remember those moments with my older son as such an amazing time in both of our lives, though he remembers them not. The atmosphere in our home was filled with quiet and loving peace because there was as yet no other child with which to be concerned and because we intently lavished all of our attention on him. Many hours did both his dad and I spend with him in our arms. With my daughter's infancy, who was my first born and who remains the love of my life and heart, the relationship with her father was already faltering and there was tension in our household. Though I never loved another human being so completely before her, as I loved that child when she was born, every child since her have I loved with equal ferocity.

There was a man who came into my life with insistent cries like a baby but I knew not how to soothe him. Most of us do learn to self-soothe as we mature into adults. Some never learn that skill and their lives are full of drama and cries for help or attention. The most soothing thing I do is hike in the forest each day. I am as consistent with that daily practice as I am with a weekly yoga session which is equally soothing. I step away from the usual demands of the busy life of a wife, mother and business partner and I drop all that is artificial in favor of the natural and in favor of the self that I am. When I am in the forest there is peace. I am no different than the squirrels, bunnies, coyotes, bobcats, raccoons and opossums. When I am at yoga, I am deeply immersed in a definite appreciation of my physical form, that which houses my soul like a temple.

Deng Ming-Dao in his The Lunar Tao considers babies crying on the day I am writing this as the Chinese New Year approaches. A mother will seek to soothe her crying baby as quickly as her skill in determining the baby's needs allows. Parents can be hypersensitive to their baby crying in public as the sound is often met by frowns from other people in public. A baby's cry is a loud demand for attention to its needs. A baby's cry is the sound of Life itself. Silence is meant for graveyards or the scholar's study in a library. Babies are future human beings who should be held, hugged and loved as they are the reminders of all that is unsullied in Life. A baby's cry reminds us that Life is worth living – a baby cries for food, love, comfort, care and the baby's caregivers seek to make everything better from a big pile of imperfections and contradictions. Babies are the hope of overcoming what has been and the beauty of all that is the now.

In the 55th verse/chapter of the Daodejing, Laozi speaks of the intact vitality of an infant – "Although his bones are fragile and his muscles soft, his grip is firm. He can cry all day without becoming hoarse because he has full harmony. To know harmony is called 'constant'. To know the constant is called 'bright'. Call increasing life propitious. Call the heart controlling energy powerful. Then things will be strong even into old age. What do you say about what is not with Tao ? What is not with Tao meets an early end." Tao is always creating new forms. Some are short-lived. What is worthwhile to Life continues long.

The cycle of Life is continuously creating new forms and destroying old forms that no longer are useful or viable. We should celebrate this. These cycles allow the space that is needed to be receptive to the new. When my life has been overfull, I have had no room for joy, no room for human warmth, no room to fulfill my deepest yearnings. A life lived at break-neck speed lacks quality but is overfull with volume and content. The amount of information that is pouring through us all day, every day, can leave us with no room to hear the small, quiet voice of the Infinite speaking to us in our hearts. We should seek to empty our minds often so that we have the vitality to meet Life like an infant – fully receptive.

~ perspective

Babies remind us about the love
of Creator for each and every
form it has created.
As parents of a newborn, we often
feel very awkward caring for our baby,
just as we feel when faced with a new
situation for the very first time.
The softness of pure newness goes within
to touch the human heart and then
develops into a personal will expressing
over time.
We are born with our babies within
before the conception ever takes place
and as soon as we are old enough to
begin caring for ourselves with careful
diligence, we should.
A baby can't help being a
beautiful creature.

#attention #cycles #hiking #infancy #life #love #nature #parenting #response #soothing