Compassion and Paradox

On this day. Every day. In these times. It is so important to be able to hold paradox – that we are all horrible and we are also beautiful. I don’t know where we all learned that we have to be primarily this way or that way. We are everything. If we could but acknowledge it, perhaps we wouldn’t walk around feeling so fragmented. And we wouldn’t exile ourselves whenever we ‘fail’. The irony is that the more we become aware, the more we are able to perceive the complexity of our own fear, we thus reject ourselves for falling short of the wonderful spiritual ideals we adore. Just when we need compassion most, the knife of honed and skillful analysis walks all over the one who simply needs to be seen or heard or held.

I say ‘we’ a lot, but I am really just talking to myself. No assumptions about others. No judgment.

Only a select few in my life know just how I think and feel. Until now. Now I talk to friends on the phone and they say, “I read your blog. So you really think like that?”
Yes. I’m not on crack. I’m not high. Yes, I think like this.

I cannot escape a day without pausing at the middle of a leaf. And then the leaf becomes the earth, an aerial shot from the moon. And that leads me to thoughts of creation and the Divine, which leads me to thoughts of patterns in nature. I end up feeling into my own patterns of thought and behavior. In the middle of all of it is a longing. Constant. Is it really longing, or is it longing mixed with the presence and response of nature that embraces my walk? When I move beyond where I can think, I just keep walking, looking at the leaves, passing windows and wondering about who lives behind them.

I’m tired and something wants to come through, something right here, signals coming through in sensation, barely ready for my understanding.