Leader

I could see as he swept his broad hand from left to right and back an expanse- a capacity to hold the intangible as if it were tattooed in spirit ink in the bones and tendons of his fingers and palm - And more still - that he knew me and stood not only in front of me but also inside of me. He knew the city and state and nation that I knew – black, white, brown, man, woman, child. He had in his bones the mountains that I had, strong rivers, sweet clouds. These were not his to keep or mine, nor ours to own and clench – but ours to acknowledge .

In that same sweeping gesture I knew, I felt the thousands he had touched when he traveled the states. I knew that he stood before me and all of the rest gathered on feet that had walked in the same dust I knew. I felt a lifting in my being that said to me I could trust him to understand and carry at least a piece of my wishes and battered dreaming. This king, magician, warrior, healer – could he be a man who would walk great and not from his talk and his entourage, but from his connection and his grounding to the moment that we occupied together.

I looked as he spoke and I could see myself, and more than myself flickering behind his skin and his brown eyes – as if I lived in his body, thought his thoughts, dreamed through his arms into an unfolding, resolute action that I hadn’t the power to attain for myself. I heard my thoughts shift from the why-can’t-he to the when-will-we. When will we stop our frenzied stuffing of our faces, or rushing, our ripping down the ancient, our chasing of the get-what-we-want endless road to unhappy empty buckets. No I knew that he know what I know that it was never about the getting and the grabbing or the pressing of buttons and the clicking of icons to change the subject to something that scared us less.

I saw in him that he could stand with me in this time. Time of consequence, realization, time to contend and confront the impact of thousands-of-years delusions that had brought us to this place. Could he see with me beyond this dream born of fear? With him I saw a way to walk a different path To become whole, brilliant, calm, grounded, linked in the work ahead and the implicit energy of now.

In that moment, I understand that I had always had what I needed and that we could find a way.

On Wildwood's Edge

Imagine that you have filled a bucket, a wooden bucket, scratched and marked from its frequent uses. You have carried it and filled it with what you could find, dropped into it what you could from your hidden places. The bucket is filled with bits of you – good wishes, pretty smiles, dreams of flowers, sweet memories, and sweat squeezed out by the muscle and bone heat made through your reaching for the ‘might be’s’.

Let all of these offerings gel together, marry their tastes and scents, sparkle in the electricity of potential. Pour the bucket out onto the salt-baked earth at your feet – that circle of earth within your view and purview, your realm of impermanent dominion. Then wait.

Wait because you are spent, because the cause of your pouring out must await its effect. All expectations from the realm of ‘might’ now must suspend and the rule of ‘is’ will enact its certain truths.

In talking to yourself, ask about what you placed in that bucket. Was that all you could find? All that you could spare? Did you hold something back for yourself because you had to or because you were afraid to stand on this baked earth with a bucket and a body now filled with nothing but nothing?

Withholding is itself a cause. Giving, for its part, brings no sure thing. Every precedent ends in its own emptying out and the eventual growth of trees (or not) is well beyond the reach of even your most eager, most extended finger tips.

That fact is an inflexible part of what is.

July 16, 2010