All this happened more or less, but that is the best I can say about anything in these strange times. I don’t know much of anything with much certitude. I have a great life. I am privileged beyond measure. I am fortunate that my life is filled with sweet pleasures, a surprising flow of energies, and abundant beauty.
I carefully document the events of my life, the chance meetings with friends and nature, the emerging feelings, rising and falling from a place I cannot name, and thoughts about how the world should work and how it actually works. Yet I know that what I see and feel is the tiniest perspective of something bigger, grander, darker, and more filled with light. I am humbled by what I don’t see and wonder what would allow more of what is real to flow through me.
At the ocean this weekend, I watched great flocks of birds streaming along the beach, held together by some great mystery that made them appear not as a group of individual birds but as a community acting as one. They flew out of sight, only to return the opposite way with just as much energy and focus. Back and forth, they flew, engaged in an ancient practice, preparing themselves for the arduous journey of migrating into warmer climes. Something in each bird knew that it could not do this journey alone and that practice was necessary to strengthen its body. I told myself they needed to remember their connection to each other to help them navigate to a place they might never have seen before.
I wonder how we humans, with our extraordinary capacity to think and imagine, could find our way back to this simple knowing that we need each other to find our way home.
How do you help others find their way home?