What We Can't Keep

There are days that defy description, that cannot be captured in any dimension but the aligned experience of the present. Today became such a series of moments that led to greater luminosity and clarity. 

Sharing a spontaneous morning heart-to-heart with a mentor helped to reconcile my immanent personal discernment with a vision of my Life Path. Spending time charging my spirit in the sunshine as I did work that connected me to the stories of people in prison in our country - that brought into relief new understanding of how my freedom is bound to theirs - reminded me of the privilege I am granted to bear their lives in my heart. Writing notes to strangers while seeing them through the eyes of people who love them drew me deeper down into the vibrating network of relationships that I am ever enmeshed in, but often forgetful of. Making another spontaneous connection with a friend who is a flame of inspiration to me grounded me in gratitude for the vital necessity of his life - of all manifestations of Life and the helpers, like him, who tend it.

Walking with my dogs, my husband, my child into a beautiful sunset moved me to try to take a picture, for I so wanted to hold it, to keep it...but I found the photo a far inadequate visage of the sunset's beauty and power, the way the light held everything in that moment, the way all our eyes were drawn into the vastness of a sky heralding transition, the fleeting illusion of color and contrast that, in all its ethereal wonder, was real. All I could do was look at my son, my husband, my dogs - beings I love beyond love - glowing in the close of the day, and feel the ache in my heart that reminds me that I have been touched, that I am alive.

The way my life is shaped by the people who form its lattice of love is beyond explanation. The hazy film of energy I see settling on an evening, the atoms pulsing and swirling as trees and fields of grass, surpasses my ability to ask if anyone else can see it, too. A day that can carry me from one place to another, though I find myself tonight in the same bed from which I rose this morning, is a mystery to cradle in sleep. In awe, I surrender to dreams this transitory gift as an offering to be woven into my neural memory, to be sacrificed to the common spirit, to be let go with bewildered thanks.