”In those moments I sometimes
catch a glimpse of my true life, a life hidden like the river beneath the ice.”
– Parker Palmer from Let Your Life Speak
Have you ever found a writer, a performer, a thinker of all
times, or perhaps just another person that makes both your face and soul smile
at the same time?
It may be in the way they live their lives. It may be in some act of kindness that they
have done. It may be in what they have
written. Or it may be just because they
sang something that just reached inside you.
Parker Palmer is one of those individuals for me. He speaks with such depth and clarity, yet
with the simplest of ways.
In moments that I need to re-find my way, I go to some of
the writing sources that always seem to inspire me. Yes, I find refuge in the Jewish
Proverbs. I find meaning in the writings
of Thich Nhat Hanh. I revisit my calling in the writings of Parker Palmer and Henri
Nouwen.
We just left a winter season of introspection. That period of time when we can pause to
discover how we can live life.
I think that we take the seasons for granted. In winter, we move through them mindlessly
and always looking for the warmer seasons to come. In the spring, we seem to be
thinking about the family “vacations” that need to be planned out. In the summer, we are outdoors and moving
about going from one event to another, all the while making plans for the fall
events and holiday seasons. We just do not seem to give the seasons a place where
they can guide us in looking at ourselves.
Hopefully, during this winter season of reflection, we had the
opportunity to glimpse through the icy cold exterior of the day to day into a warmed
life that flows inside of us. Just as the
trees had shed their leaves… a symbol of their external beauty… its life moved
inside of itself to develop a greater strength in the roots, which anchor the
tree into the soil of the earth. We,
too, have gone through a season of moving inside of our own souls to take a
moment from the busyness of life to develop the roots inside of ourselves to
anchor us for the impending seasons.
Now in the spring season, we move into a period of renewal
and rebirth. Just as we see the flowers
and the buds on the trees start to peek their colorful heads from the dark
depth of their birthing place of protection, we, too, are moving into a new season
of life.
If we have caught a “glimpse of (our) true life” during the
season of introspection, we have discovered what path we are designed to travel
on. Hopefully, we have looked at our sense of being a little differently than
before. Many times we get caught up into
a cultural movement which pushes us into competing more… into earning more… into
consuming more… and yet our life, that is uniquely individual, yearns for more
than just moving in the same direction as everyone else. We are reluctant… dare we say… afraid… to
step outside of our environment that we live in to be different. We have learned to live from the outside in
and then wonder why we are never satisfied.
Instead, we need to pause long enough not to say how we want to live
life but to listen long enough for our life to tell us how we should live
it. We are becoming deaf to the beating
of our soul because the noise of the world has been turned up too loudly.
Nature has a way of teaching us so much more on how we
should walk in our own present life. We
have become the consumers of the earth more than the caretakers. A caretaker will do just that…. “take care”. They will know the dangers and the
possibilities in the land and the creatures that reside in the habitat. It may be possible that we no longer listen
to our own inner self because we are just thinking about how we can consume
life not care for it.
Parker Palmer writes, “Before
you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to
do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you decided to
live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you
represent.”
We all go through a season of what is seemingly lost. Is it possible that the loss is not really a
loss but a lesson? Is it possible that
the lesson is meant to be a positive teaching of how to live and love? Perhaps the loss is showing us what we truly
value and therefore giving us a chance to live those values out in a richer
sense.
We see the streams of water… the current is flowing and
carrying with it what needs to be taken away… perhaps the only thing the separates
us from that Living Water is the icy barrier of being something that we are
truly not meant to be.
Breaking script… Namaste
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