Life expands and contracts in the yoke of a second. One minute there’s an unseeable vastness between life and death, and the next, it’s the length of a needle we’ve dropped and can’t seem to find. There is no one name or reason or label we can put on what we go through, though all of us, in our want to calm our fears, try to pin it down. Yet when doing all we can—holding, listening, bearing witness, and resisting the demon of “why” while leaning into the angel of “how”—there’s so much wisdom in the depths of our rawness. In being so present and engaged, we are forever shaped and carved as we shape and carve. This only makes us a more finely wrought instrument. So you are not blind and thickheaded, no matter how powerless you might feel. Quite the opposite: you are a clear jewel being burnished until all of life is reflected through your deeply exposed heart.
A Question to Walk With: Describe your apprenticeship with the teachers “why” and “how.” What has each taught you?
This excerpt is from my book, Things That Join the Sea and the Sky (Sounds True, 2017).
*Photo credit: Christopher Hiew
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