Like the First Morning

Some mornings, there's a hush in the atmosphere. We can feel it. The earth seems a quiet place, home seems a sacred haven. This is such a morning. As I came down the stairs, it was as if I was seeing things for the first time. My footsteps seemed lighter. The act of making breakfast became a ritual with each movement graced by some inner awareness, that sacred hush.

Life has been a whirlwind of visitors and travel. A new housemate and her pets have moved in as well. Today, well, today I'm alone in a house made more beautiful by the knick knacks artfully placed by my housemate while I was gone. Maybe this is why I'm seeing anew, "like the first morning," if you will.

Or, maybe it's because my heart is full from the travel and the people. I spent my travel time in Reno, not usually the most spiritual mecca. Oddly, this time it was. The cab drivers were friendly wanderers telling fervently tales of the old days in Reno. Strangers reached out to lift my baggage. The sun was shining on the old, amazing mountains in the near distance.

My younger son greeted me with a warm hug and we chattered until all misunderstandings and misadventures were shared and healed. I saw him through my third eye and my earth eyes. I gobbled him up with my eyes in the way that Gwendolyn Brooks says mothers do. I also saw his struggles and his moral victories. We spent a week side-by-side laughing our souls into happiness.

And then there were the high desert mountains. Everywhere you looked, there was a breathtaking vista. To the south were endless brown mountains where the sun had melted the snow. To the north, ah, the north, were snow capped mountains sharply outlined against the sky, sprinkled with evergreens and sage brush. We drove up a dirt road on a sunny day ritualistically stopping to open and close each gate as we progressed. We lurched and labored our way until we turned a corner and came to what they call the Irish valley where two mountains see to be facing each other over a sheer drop. Everything was covered with snow and utterly silent. The sacred hush.

When we arrived at our destination, the mountain top, we were greeted by six enormous dogs not one of which weighed less than 70 pounds. Like cowboys coming home, we faced doggie love and a pot of stew simmering on the back of the wood stove. Another kind of sacrament.

This morning's holy silence, that moment when another world seemed to open up in and around me, maybe extended the many benedictions of the last week or so. Is that how it is? Sometimes we see through the glass clearly in a series of synergistic events that tumble us into the looking glass; sometimes it's just grace. Maybe it's always grace. Roxie

Namaste

Welcome to all the kindred souls who are following this blog. Something tells me things are going to get lively in this place, soon. This is a week of contemplation. I'm on vacation and having many rich and helpful conversations and experiences.

I've reached a decision that I need to revise the way I live my life to be more intentional. That decision relates to blogging, exercise, and meditation. I'm in Nevada where the mountains are snow covered all the way to the horizon and the ravines drop to the middle of the earth. It's heart-stoppingly beautiful. I'm grateful for the drama of northwestern nature. It doesn't do damage; it just stands there so varied and beautiful that you can look at it forever.

Thinking about forever, we went to see a show about Black Holes at the local planetarium. Dude, what ARE these terrifying natural occurances? How can it be that matter sucks in on itself so intensely that it swallows itself and disintegrates. It's like bad science fiction. Everything we know regenerates into something else. Can there BE something like a black hole that doesn't regenerate, that goes into nothingness and doesn't return? The spiritual loop hole is the "worm hole" concept. Maybe, there is a tunnel of sorts from the black hole to a white something or other in another plane that is generating life.

My son and I sat at a picnic table in the sun and said simultaneously, "I can't wrap my mind around black holes."

On the other hand, Big Dude, how amazing that there exists something so magnificent, something generating its own laws and forces, something that we CAN'T understand or even approach. Poet Wendell Berry celebrates the darkness and the unknown for the humility and awe these generate in us. That's how I feel about the Nevada landscape and the dark places in space. They leave our minds floundering and our spirits bowed. Roxie