Gazing in the Mirror

March 30 - Into the Misty Morning

It is when we try to grapple
with another man's intimate need
that we perceive how incomprehensible,
wavering, and misty are the beings
that share with us the sight of the
stars and the warmth of the sun.
~ Joseph Conrad

I am still and receptive to Life.
I let Life flow through me into
all that I do, say or think. I shall
let my Life be what it is, and shall
not worry nor complain. I am now
entered into the Secret Place of
the Soul where complete quiet reigns
supreme.
~ Ernest Holmes

One night I stepped out onto the back porch and looked at the less full moon encircled in a misty light with a colored ring. I noted that the field behind the house was enshrouded in a fog that had moved into the valley. When I woke the next morning, the fogginess was still all around us. I stepped outside with my morning banana. Everything was too wet to go down and sit next to the flowing creek as I often do in the mornings to catch some sunlight and wake up my eyes. Instead, today I walked slowly along the road that parallels the creek just taking in the sounds and sights.

It was a quiet secretly hidden world I was enveloped in. It was comforting like a blanket but chilly without being intolerable. Brisk would have been a good description. I thought about how nice it is to be living in this rural isolation. There is no stress caused here from human predator or leech unless one makes a war with their neighbor and that has certainly happened to others close by but not to us. I truly like the lack of stress that living here affords me and there is always the city or local towns and people online – I am never truly lonely.

There is a nicely slow pace to my life right now. My husband will always worry about some perceived lack of business activity – I focus on how I am always provided for with enough and taken care of. What do I want financially ? – to be able to pay bills without concern, to have the money to buy a gold coin to exchange for a tooth or repair something that breaks unexpectedly or receive medical attention when it's needed. Simply having enough that these desires never feel like anxious problems is enough to satisfy me.

I find that stillness, quiet, fog and mist seem to be universally valued by contemplative, reflective people. I jot down thoughts – "Enveloped in a cozy blanket of misty vaporous fog. The background indistinct, making the bare branches of nearby trees stark against the white backdrop". Someone said "Truth is the torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it". Hmmm, I will have to think on that one awhile. And in considering the essay I wrote yesterday about my own family's sadness – I feel this one beautifully today – "Big droplet tears are shed for yesterday, but are dried in time for tomorrow, until all that remain are foggy, broken memories". It has been said and I have found it to be true – time does heal all wounds – to which I add if one is willing to let the hurts go . . . to release them into experiences of no lasting import.

A musical composer, Benjamin Britten, once likened creating written music to "driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house – the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house." I could say the same thing about composing an essay or writing a blog. From an even larger perspective, I could say the same thing about a lifetime – regardless of whether chance and circumstance composes that for me or I take a role in determining my route to navigate through it. Another Benjamin, Franklin this time, mused on a man traveling in foggy weather and said "near him all appears clear, though in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them." In truth we all are. We think we know where we are headed and then find ourselves suddenly in some other destination that we had not intended.

Whether we are comfortable not seeing very far ahead or whether we find being in the fog disorienting and a cause for anxiety or uncertainty is simply a personal subjective response. This morning I loved being in the fog. I felt as though I was living in a nebulous, mystical place of magic and beauty. As I write these words, the fog has lifted and is almost gone now. The fog has transformed into clouds that will clear out and if I am lucky all will change so drastically that I'll see sunshine and blue sky before the sunlight says good night to the stars. Rachel Carson, a naturalist after my own heart shared – "My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon." Tonight what I see out my back porch after dark may appear different but the peaceful quiet will be much the same – or not – for Spring Peepers may be calling loudly. This morning tiny flowers and pink leaves are showing . . . clearly Winter cannot deny Spring reality for much longer.

~ perspective

When all is still around me I am
reminded of how good it feels to be
quiet.
I take time to let myself slow down
and savor life and I realize that being
able to do so is a supreme blessing.
I believe that if more and more people
can find that place of inner stillness
the external results would change the
world in which I find myself living.
I love to sit on the bank of the little
creek that is always flowing by my
home and let the water carry my
thoughts gently downstream or simply
listen to the sounds of nature and
restore my soul to its natural expression
before returning to man-made conditions.
I have found myself seeking out the
depths of fog in the valley only to find
there is nowhere that it actually is
and yet nowhere that it is not visible.

#beauty #desire #enough #finances #fog #magic #nature #peace #sadness #truth