Who We Are

ATTEND:

I accidentally dropped and broke a picture frame recently containing an historic print I deeply treasured. The print itself was not damaged but the frame needed repairs and, as I struggled to make them, not really taking time to do it right, the frame broke even more and I realized a completely new frame was needed. I was angry at myself and at the frame so I smashed it on the floor, scattering bits of broken glass all over the room. A shard went deep into my thigh. I pulled off my pants and saw into my body, not a pretty sight and the pain was overwhelming. I rushed upstairs, screaming, for Christian to help me. He cleaned it with antiseptic and covered it with a thick piece of cotton gauze. Not having health insurance and with a busy day ahead, I didn’t want to go to a hospital or see a doctor. I held the bandage in place with duck tape and went back to my work. The next few days were agony, especially going up and down the stairs. Fortunately the bleeding stopped and there was no infection. I was lucky. Now, two weeks later, the wound still hurts at times though it is nearly completely healed and the scab is starting to come off. I’ll always have a scar there, a reminder of the day I flipped out and, in so doing, injured myself while nearly ruining the print, which I also crumpled up and threw away but later uncrumpled and put into a new frame. The pain tells me to “Attend, attend.” To pay attention to the moment. It is not to be ignored or denied. Be here now, it says, be here now.

UNIFY:

It’s winter and I take the dogs for a walk each morning. Dido, the Dalmatian, walks right over the ice to the other side of the creek but my little mutt refuses to step on the ice. If there were ice creatures who lived on the ice, they would think ice was all there was. They would not be aware of the flowing water beneath them, nor would they know they were water themselves. Until the spring thaw. As the ice melted and the ice creatures fell into the water, they would catch a brief glimpse of a whole new world which they were becoming part of as they melted into it.

I take an eye dropper and fill it with stream water. The water is trapped and separated from the stream. It is now an individual. Then I squeeze the stopper and send the water back into the stream to rejoin the flow as it goes to the sea.

INFINITE:

I have a number of African and Central American masks on the wall. They stare blindly, waiting for someone to wear them and bring them to life. But I sometimes think that behind each mask I can see a bright, yellow light, like the sun streaming through the eye holes. Whatever it is may not even be conscious or aware except by seeing through the masks, and the same light shines through each mask. The mask is finite; the light is infinite and opens into a world far beyond the everyday world.

Our house is built of horizontal, vertical and diagonal beams much as a barn. The beams are covered with exterior wood siding and cannot be seen. So I was surprised one cold, damp morning when frost was on the grass to come back from walking the dogs to see every internal support clearly visible on the outside of the siding, like someone had x-rayed the house. I finally realized that the beams were a different temperature than the open spaces between them and that frost was outlining the beams. Sure enough, once the sun came up and melted the frost, the image of the beams disappeared. Once again they were under the siding and could not be seen.

I was watching a favorite conductor leading an orchestra on YouTube with one of my favorite works. It had been composed many years earlier and was simply notes on paper, existing only as potential, until musicians played them under the coordinated leadership of the conductor. At that moment the music came to life. What had existed in one form now took another form and only became completed by making them sound. Actors do the same thing, bringing pre-determined roles to life but always in a unique manner, never the same way twice but always following patterns of organization, patterns of creation.

SINGULARITY

When I walk the dogs in the morning along the creek, the sun streams through the bare winter trees, reflecting off the snow into a myriad of shining small bits of diamond. It’s the same sun I see shining through my masks but now the mask is the world around me so that even though everything seems unique and separate, we are also part of this underlying single unity of which we are its incarnations.

One of our Muscovy ducks was run over by a car the other day and his body was thrown into the pond where I found him. He was the oldest and slowest moving. He loved to sit on the warm asphalt in cold weather. Evidently he just couldn’t move fast enough to get out of the way of the quickly approaching vehicle.

I held his wet, dead body in my hands. Yesterday he was living and happy, bringing us pleasure with his very existence. Today he is gone. Things happen so quickly and unexpectedly. I think of dreams where, even though I’m creating the dream on a subconscious level, within the dream I have no control at all over what happens. It seems the very definition of fate and destiny, ideas not highly regarded in this age of individuality.

I lay his body in the area where our dead go. Eventually there will be nothing left to show he ever existed. But for now, I remember, and with memory comes compassion for that sweet, incarnated existence. And the call comes to me, beckoning from a distant land, to attend, attend, always, to attend.

Hymn:

You and I are brought into being,

we are one.

So to bring vision and healing,

we are one.

The earth sees itself through us,

transforming in harmony.

We are one.

Hymn:

Living in the ground of being,

flowing through now.

All that we see is one in the spirit,

earth, leaf and cow.

Selfless, healing, river, refine.

Nurture creation, all is divine.

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