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Posted: March 6th, 2008 at 2:27am By: Anne E. Ulvestad
I'm looking out the window of a coffee shop. Below me the parking lot is bustling. Cars are lined up in rows or weaving here and there, looking for the ideal place to stop. Far above, the clouds are also aligned, like the cars. Clumped here and there, but with much more grace and style — except, perhaps, in the eyes of the engineer.
What I had noticed first, though, were the gulls — sleek and pure in their lines, elegance and flight. Flying in twos or threes, they reflect the families walking below them. How many people have looked up, longing to fly?
I Am paying attention and feel my heart soften to embrace the mother and child running with the chill wind, searching for their car in the maze around them. I Am wrapping with Your love the young woman who is walking slowly and alone — Starbucks cup in one hand, Wet Seal and Ann Taylor bags in the other.
This love, this energy, reaching outward, is only an extension of the Beloved, who has burrowed deeply within my being. The peace I am feeling is coming from the same source that generates the gentle, rocking motion of wave and tide. In both love and tide, the center is not outside or above or beyond us. The center is the beingness of the Beloved invading, identifying with who I Am, and pushing the wave along — rocked, as within a mother's arms.
Embracing this seeming contradiction — car and cloud, girl and gull — lets my soul stretch. I imagine that I Am, in reality, expanding like the universe, at this very moment — Now. Thomas Moore says, "In the course of such a debate the soul becomes more complex and spacious." In "Care of the Soul" Moore writes that spaciousness reflects the openness of heart that leaves behind judgment or moralizing and opens us up to empathy and understanding.
When I see and pay attention to beauty, when I listen and am open to another's story (especially in suffering), I find God. Over the past few years my relationship with the "beingness" of the Creator, the unconditional love and support of the Mother and the Father, has transformed. Burrowing deeper into my own being, I Am expanding and connecting with the tones that run underneath the currents of the world.
God, as the Beloved, has tunneled into the abyss, the nothingness, the emptiness that exists beneath my physical experiences. My heart, the eye of my soul, connects this substantial world of air and light, wind and rain, with a spiral of energy to the insubstantial, the spiritual, where everything is Now.
This "beingness" of self — the I Am, is the image I associate with the vast "Beingness" of the Creator and the Creation. I Am is the connection I have that leads me to the Beloved. This image is what is original in each person. Imagining the root of each being as an unfathomable mystery, says Moore, "that is the very seed and heart of each individual." Taking the time to notice may be what saves us.
One of the archetypical symbols of our species is the Quest. However, sometimes in the pursuit of change, the quest itself keeps us from undergoing the gradual transformation, or recognizing the dying, that must happen before new life can emerge. Our culture, in many instances, does not allow for suffering, or reflection. We look for the cure, or at the very least the alleviation of the symptoms, rather than taking the time to notice the source of the pain and resolving it, or working through it.
In this month before springtime, thoughts like these are very relevant. We long for the end of darkness, to be in sight of the "Promised Land," or just the end of the school term or job project. This is the best time to let our reflection, our imaginings work. Take time to look at the life you are living when it is literally (or symbolically) frozen in place and allow those parts that have become painful to surface. Often it is these very splinters that become excuses for our inability to love, and their subsequent exposure redefines their value and meaning in our life.
— — —
Anne E. Ulvestad is a free-lance writer residing in Maryland. Having gotten her MA in earth literacy, she is now embarking on the further adventures of a Ph.D. in Wisdom Studies. She is available for public lectures and group presentations and rituals on Spirituality and the Environment. Anne can be reached at {email anne@ourplaceintheuniverse.com}anne@ourplaceintheuniverse.com{/email}. © Copyright 2008 by Anne E. Ulvestad.
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I'm looking out the window of a coffee shop. Below me the parking lot is bustling. Cars are lined up in rows or weaving here and there, looking for the ideal place to stop. Far above, the clouds are also aligned, like the cars. Clumped here and there, but with much more grace and style — except, perhaps, in the eyes of the engineer.
What I had noticed first, though, were the gulls — sleek and pure in their lines, elegance and flight. Flying in twos or threes, they reflect the families walking below them. How many people have looked up, longing to fly?
I Am paying attention and feel my heart soften to embrace the mother and child running with the chill wind, searching for their car in the maze around them. I Am wrapping with Your love the young woman who is walking slowly and alone — Starbucks cup in one hand, Wet Seal and Ann Taylor bags in the other.
This love, this energy, reaching outward, is only an extension of the Beloved, who has burrowed deeply within my being. The peace I am feeling is coming from the same source that generates the gentle, rocking motion of wave and tide. In both love and tide, the center is not outside or above or beyond us. The center is the beingness of the Beloved invading, identifying with who I Am, and pushing the wave along — rocked, as within a mother's arms.
Embracing this seeming contradiction — car and cloud, girl and gull — lets my soul stretch. I imagine that I Am, in reality, expanding like the universe, at this very moment — Now. Thomas Moore says, "In the course of such a debate the soul becomes more complex and spacious." In "Care of the Soul" Moore writes that spaciousness reflects the openness of heart that leaves behind judgment or moralizing and opens us up to empathy and understanding.
When I see and pay attention to beauty, when I listen and am open to another's story (especially in suffering), I find God. Over the past few years my relationship with the "beingness" of the Creator, the unconditional love and support of the Mother and the Father, has transformed. Burrowing deeper into my own being, I Am expanding and connecting with the tones that run underneath the currents of the world.
God, as the Beloved, has tunneled into the abyss, the nothingness, the emptiness that exists beneath my physical experiences. My heart, the eye of my soul, connects this substantial world of air and light, wind and rain, with a spiral of energy to the insubstantial, the spiritual, where everything is Now.
This "beingness" of self — the I Am, is the image I associate with the vast "Beingness" of the Creator and the Creation. I Am is the connection I have that leads me to the Beloved. This image is what is original in each person. Imagining the root of each being as an unfathomable mystery, says Moore, "that is the very seed and heart of each individual." Taking the time to notice may be what saves us.
One of the archetypical symbols of our species is the Quest. However, sometimes in the pursuit of change, the quest itself keeps us from undergoing the gradual transformation, or recognizing the dying, that must happen before new life can emerge. Our culture, in many instances, does not allow for suffering, or reflection. We look for the cure, or at the very least the alleviation of the symptoms, rather than taking the time to notice the source of the pain and resolving it, or working through it.
In this month before springtime, thoughts like these are very relevant. We long for the end of darkness, to be in sight of the "Promised Land," or just the end of the school term or job project. This is the best time to let our reflection, our imaginings work. Take time to look at the life you are living when it is literally (or symbolically) frozen in place and allow those parts that have become painful to surface. Often it is these very splinters that become excuses for our inability to love, and their subsequent exposure redefines their value and meaning in our life.
— — —
Anne E. Ulvestad is a free-lance writer residing in Maryland. Having gotten her MA in earth literacy, she is now embarking on the further adventures of a Ph.D. in Wisdom Studies. She is available for public lectures and group presentations and rituals on Spirituality and the Environment. Anne can be reached at {email anne@ourplaceintheuniverse.com}anne@ourplaceintheuniverse.com{/email}. © Copyright 2008 by Anne E. Ulvestad.
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