Trees, where you sit (Solmet)

There was a tiny moment, in the company of these pine-trees, when I knew that the same life was rushing through our bodies, the same wind was blowing in their branches and in my soul; that their sturdy rootedness and their gentle swaying are what I am; that they share my pain and my bewilderment, my perplexity and my determination to be rooted in the Real. This is what "here and now" is to me: a communion of all living things, in God. 

Their tops in the clouds, their branches are stout, 

And thin, tall and proud they're swaying about;

     Of sunlight and rain

     They're talking again 

Allowed to spell them aloud 

Richard Lewis, Tenor - Where'er You Walk (from 'Semele' by G.F. Handel)

The here and now in the raindrops

And so, even today when the last attempt to prolong the mild Autumn finally fails and the heart is driven inside, I glanced across the dreary damp scene as I rode past. Nothing more empty than a wind- and rain-swept car park: unpeopled and denatured. And it connected with past emptiness and past nothingness. But stealing sideways glances, I caught a row of waterdrops, hanging from metal - a sideways, waterdrop view of the world - and thought that yes, this is reality too, this is now and nowhere else, this is not even the past I think I am connecting with. And that, amazingly and counter-intuitively, God is in this too, hanging there in the raindrops. I didn't smile and I wasn't happy, but I was really there and determined to be there, as I am determined to be here, listening to the winter raining in and knowing that I am more connected to you and all that I love in being connected to now and here, even when my past tells me it feels like absence.

It is already here --- let me feel it - by Leunig

When the heart

Is cut or cracked or broken

Do not clutch it

Let the wound lie open

.

Let the wind

From the good old sea blow in

To bathe the wound with salt

And let it sting.

.

Let a stray dog lick it

Let a bird lean in the hole and sing

A simple song like a tiny bell

And let it ring

Tragi-comedy

Sitting in the sand

"Charity beareth all things"

As soon as it becomes clear that "I" cannot possibly escape from the reality of the present, since "I" is nothing other than what I know now, this inner turmoil must stop. No possibility remains but to be aware of pain, fear, boredom or grief in the same complete way that one is aware of pleasure. The human organism has the most wonderful powers of adaptation to both physical and psychological pain. But these can only come into full play when the pain is not being constantly restimulated by this inner effort to get away from it, to separate the "I" from the feeling. The effort creates a state of tension in which the pain thrives. But when the tension ceases, mind and body begin to absorb the pain as water reacts to a blow or a cut. 

Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

Falling into Thy will

I said : to fight for the best, and to accept the worst. 
This is not quite adequate though, 

because in reality, there is no such thing as "best" and "worst" --  these are only opinions. 

There is only  "Thy will be done" - welcome, accepted, made mine. 

There is only what in French is so well called "épouser le mouvement" -- to espouse; to become one; to coincide. 

Falling upwards through the dense clouds, 

falling together, 

heart in heart, falling through 

the unknown skies above the unmapped lands, 

falling into Thy will.