I have recently passed several milestones simultaneously while at the same time completing a major goal. All of this has brought me to an energetic calm. A life that is suddenly open and wide with many possibilities. None of that was without effort demanding focus. So I have been resting. Taking time. Heeding my instincts to be quiet and listen. In a funny way this kind of place in life, when it has occurred in the past, has been a bit tricky as I am a person who prefers a day ridden with purpose and driven by a desire to prove oneself as useful. What is different, what has (perhaps) changed, is that I now know that ‘projects’ are easy to start and harder to get out of. So being available, having the to do list a bit rudimentary and unexciting is bearable for a bit longer.

Solitude is a discipline. Like any form of exercise, it allows me to sharpen in a particular way. Any internal contradictions are revealed. Weakness is a signal, not a fault. In the silence and emptiness that comes with detachment, my body and mind can become instruments for my soul. And my soul, foreground much of the time, becomes familiar. My mind, which in solitude can be akin to a feral cat, slowly becomes accustomed and no longer as fearful. There are some essentials I require to survive in prolonged solitude. Pattern, routines and physical work. And a goal. A point to it. Otherwise it is running away. Which is futile. Solitude teaches me my natural state. After a while (the longest I have had is a few years) everything non-essential is stripped away. Jettisoned overboard as it is no longer useful. And I become overtly aware of life in all its forms. I become one with my surroundings. I become more microphone and less speaker.

Service. It is through service that I manifest value. To others perhaps, but also to myself. At the end of the day I can look back and see how at least some actions, no matter how seemingly trivial, furthered someone else along their way. It is a happy thing when it is noticed, and yet that is so not the point of the exercise. (Here he goes again with a rowing metaphor…ugh) In an eight none of the rowers can truly shine, the point is to blend and morph into a single organism pulling the boat in sequence. Choirs seem to work the same way.

“Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
–William Butler Yeats

Yesterday as a Tour Leader, the first day of a tour, meeting the participants for the first time. 22 people whose names I know yet have no faces to the names. As the afternoon drew into evening, at dinner, curiously observing them with one another as they got to know who each other were. This never ceases to delight me. The graceful way the individual characters emerge in the story being told this week of who we are as a group. The building, slowly and methodically, of a community of spontaneity, who have come together from disparate places for a communal experience. It is always filled with unexpected treasures.

When I sit down to write, or grab my camera to go out and take some pictures, this is the underlying question. It’s amazing how I never have to go very far. In reminiscing about the past, or recalling old friends, it is as if I have choices which will induce different directions or perspectives. The soundtrack if you will determine the flavor. Opera, burlesque, slapstick or romance. Bending my experience so as to influence my posture, the way I hold life in my hand. Open or clenched fist, the choice is mine. Being conscious of this is power.

When I learned to sail in a sunfish as a kid, I could see how the direction the wind blew didn’t necessarily force the direction I could navigate, the course I would take was a matter of understanding how to adjust the sail and the tiller, making it possible for me to rein the wind to my will. That is what I mean, letting the winds of life become an asset to further whatever way I see as mine. That is beautiful, and that is what I tend to keep a watch for this morning.

Enough is an arbitrary mark. Set with either randomness or aspiration, the delineation, once made, tends to be static. Against this mark, I measure and gauge a position relative to it. I can, therefore, assess my having made the mark. The how is in the measuring. Left to whatever devices I use I may have relatively little competence in using, this measuring can, and does, prove faulty. Example: to see if I have enough gas to get from home to my mom’s, I use a device in my car which tells me how far the gas will take me in miles, and how many miles to my mom’s, the rest is math. Contrasting that to my sitting at a restaurant and deciding what to order and determining that I can afford something based on my ‘recollection’ of how much money I have on the card I intend to use. That sometimes doesn’t work out as well. Hunches are problematic in this area. Lastly I can cheat (and have) by moving the mark, remembering it is arbitrary. Example: realizing that a change in circumstances beyond my control I have reduced income and can no longer afford the lifestyle I am living. Rather than find more income, I can cut expenses so that when completed my lifestyle is within the mark set by the new lower income. I have done that many times. The why is also interesting (and not asked in the question). Sometimes it is a game, truly, a way to move through my day or a task. Setting a distance to row is one common example. Yet there is another reason. It is to be free of doubt, released from anxiety. Measuring in such a way that it discerns and sets, restores balance. Balance is essential. To me anyways. It allows me to walk.

I have several teachers whose voices constantly guide me. Christopher Alexander, the Architect, whose books literally launched my career. Transforming the way I see the work of designing the built environment, and also carrying this into social architecture: the deliberate design of a group. Tom Yeomans whose work in the field of psychology, and particularly the life of the soul have continually allowed me to manifest my truest self in the present moment. And Nóirín Ní Riain, an Irish singer, writer, teacher, theologian, and authority on Gregorian Chant, whose teaching has moved my chant into a powerful form of prayer.

Not fear. That is not it. It is a lack of enthusiasm. What does that mean? I guess that I am so content, satisfied, with my beautiful life that I am not eagerly seeking some ambitious goal to improve it. Ambition has a side effect for me which is stress. That, stress, is a variety of fear that eats away at appreciation. I get restless and doubtful. At the moment I am reveling in the normal pace, the lack of excitement preferable to the storm and strum of a challenging target I have and am enough this morning. And yet, it is only a pause in play. I am really only deeply alive when I am climbing some mountain (metaphorically). It’s probably why people swim the English Channel.

mmm…thanks for this. It resonates SO much for me this morning. I feel like my age and general conditions suggest a complacency I cannot help but rebel against. I am a conduit Holly. Perhaps like me, we cannot help ourselves but be out there quickening aliveness, all the while clearing away any internal detritus that foments resignation. With a determined unwillingness to leave any responsibility on anyone else’s doorstep. And yet THAT, that quality in us, our unrelenting spurring on of ourselves is being fully alive. You are Holly the gardener. Judging is not positive, it’s true, but I ask myself often if the inner judgment is actually more of an inner examination, the first step to calibration and course correction? David Whyte’s poem “Everything is Waiting for you” comes to mind.

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.