There are times in any life that seem to be spinning at a speed faster than can in reality be lived, truly lived. I may be teetering on the edge of just such a time. Since returning from Ireland only two weeks ago, I am finding myself remembering the sweet, greenness of that place as if it happened years ago. Perhaps it is a symptom of the times in which we are living, the frantic pace of these pre-election days. Others may be having this same swirling sensation, this feeling of being in a boiling pot into which more and more ingredients keep being thrown. Somehow I would gain some comfort in knowing that it is not just my experience but that others are also trying to grab onto a solid thing that will steady them.
On Thursday, I was blessed to spend the day listening to the deep, rich words of poet David Whyte. To be a part of this day bathed in beauty and reflection only resulted in pointing out my own spinning. When confronted with the questions he asked through poetry and his own storytelling, I nearly became undone with my own lack of reflection, my own constant movement. Questions like: What story have you been repeating that isn’t true? How invitational is your identity? How invitational is your work place? What do you need to do to drink from another well? What are you being asked to step into?
These are not questions to think through while driving in rush hour traffic or downing a fast food lunch. These are insomnia producing, middle-of-the-night, wrestling questions. They are the kind of questions you put in a backpack full of provisions to take into the wilderness. And yet, these questions and even more have been stuffed into my already full ‘things to be reflected upon’ space. At this point my brain, my body, my spirit, feels like one of those overstuffed bears you can buy at the mall. The seams are near to bursting!
What is needed is some good old down time, some mulling time, some staring into the middle distance time. I am not sure when this time will come given the coming days but I am reminded of another saying Whyte dropped into his vivid telling of story. In remembering a time when he and his good friend John O’Donohue were together, he told of a time when he told friend that he was thinking of giving his own father a gift of money. O’Donohue asked how much? When Whyte responded with a sum, O’Donohue encouraged him to give twice the amount. “Go against yourself, David!”
Go against yourself. It is not a phrase I had heard before but it stuck with me. Go against yourself. Take what you would normally do and expand it or do the opposite of what you might. Take what feels comfortable and go the extra step. Take what is a small gesture and make it a grand one.
I am thinking of what it would mean to go against myself in all this spinning. What would happen if I, if you, if we, simply sat down and took a good,long,restful time of reflection? What if we went against ourselves and allowed the questions, the really important questions, to spend time in us until we lived into an answer that brought newness, something we hadn’t planned for or ever expected? What would happen if we turned off all the messages coming at us and instead spent time with what is already residing within us?
In these days, these precious days that are after all our lives, may we each find times of going against ourselves in whatever way that means. May the end, which will come sooner or later, not find us still waiting to reflect on the way the sun shone on the water, that particular day, when we walked with a beloved companion on a rocky shore in the greenest of places.
