The Story: An Update

To my faithful few followers: I am officially pulling the plug on the blogging of "The Story." The story hasn't been terribly plugged-in at ChrysCrossing anyway, so from your perspective, nothing much will change. From my perspective, the story is a book, the book is in the making, and the making is taking on a life of its own.

I received two revelations of late. The first came during a 10-day silent meditation retreat last May. While meditating alone in my room, I received a vision of the book as a whole, something I'd been lacking all along. Immediately after the vision came the opening lines of the first two chapters. Plopped in my lap, just like that, word for word. Unfortunately, one of the retreat rules was No Writing. Fortunately, I break rules. Alone in my room, I pulled a pen and a notebook from my purse, and I wrote the words down. Gasp! I know, right? I'm such a rebel.

When heaven gives you a gift, you best shut up and receive it.

The second revelation, which came a few weeks later, was not about the book itself but about my relationship with the book. Ah, relationships. Suffice it to say, the revelation demanded that I divorce the story from this blog.

When heaven tells you to do something, you best shut up and do it.

So, while the book is taking shape in the hands of a rebellious wielder of pens, I'll see if I can stop by here from time to time to share tidbits and tales from this gal's daily life. If I am yet and again silent here for long stretches of time, it's because the book is a jealous and demanding sonamabeets.

Thanks for your patience, my friends. Na'maste kala.

New Year

Every new morning leads to the dead of night, which gives rise to another new day, and every 365 of these, another new year. Again and again and again. Everything always changes, and there is sameness in constant change.

Do you ever think about the fact that time doesn't really pass? How can time pass? Time is merely a method we use to count the earth's orbits around the sun and the earth's rotations on its axis. Time does not pass. We do.

We whoosh through the solar system around the sun, constantly, and as we do, so come and go the seasons and the years. All the while, we spin around and around like a spinning top, and as we do, so come and go the days and nights.

What if you step back and watch that movement from beyond? Step outside our solar system, where calendars and clocks do not exist, and watch the planets whoosh and spin, whoosh and spin. No years or seasons, no days or nights, nothing but the constant movement of planets around the sun.

Now, zoom in. Zoom in on planet earth, zoom in on one person. Yourself, for example. From that place outside the realm of calendars and clocks, watch your life. Watch those two wee cells from your parents' bodies fuse and then divide and grow and grow, watch yourself whoosh from your mother's body, gasp for your first breath, wriggle through infancy, into childhood, now your teen years, watch yourself develop and change, take steps and fall, make decisions and mistakes, win, lose, celebrate, grieve, whoosh, you're an adult, middle-aged, whoosh, lines on your face, white hair, whoosh, creaking joints, whoosh, keep watching, keep watching and don't stop.

What does that look like? What does your life look like from that place outside of time? You know what it looks like to me? It looks like the constant unfolding of a flower.

From that perspective, I feel glad as I watch the years "pass." From that perspective, I feel happy about turning fifty. And from that perspective, I feel peace even as I grieve at the grave.

Just over a year ago, we buried my father. This year, my daughter carries my first grandchild in her belly. And here I stand in between. Life is a flower, a flower in constant bloom. Do you feel it? Can you step back and feel the beautiful sameness of constant change?

For every petal that withers and falls, another opens from the center. When I think of the fallen petal as nutrients for the soil, soil that nourishes the new bloom, then who can take away my joy? Who can destroy my pleasure?

Nobody, no thing.

Happy New Year, my beloveds. May we know the beauty of the constant unfolding of this moment.

Whoosh...

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And the years are rolling by me
They are rockin' evenly
I am older than I once was
And younger than I'll be, that's not unusual
It isn't strange
After changes upon changes
We are more or less the same
After changes we are more or less the same

      --Paul Simon, from "The Boxer"