Ziggurat and Spring Storm on the Horizon - 4-25-23
Till the cloud weeps, how should the garden
smile?
The weeping of the cloud and the burning of
the sun
are the pillars of this world: twist these two
strands together.
Since the searing heat of the sun and the
moisture of the clouds
keep the world fresh and sweet,
keep the sun of your intelligence burning bright
and your eye glistening with tears. Rumi - Intelligence and Tears
As I moved toward dreamtime last night, I opened a book of Rumi wisdom. The verse above is where my eyes landed. My heart followed. I felt the paradox that rises often with opposites: bitter and sweet, joy and sorrow. Each holding truth, sanity, yet not all the truth, nor all the sanity.
Earlier in the evening I watched a Charles Eisenstein talk titled The Next Five Years. As I listened, I felt a deep resonance as he wove together a myriad of thoughts and possibilities about the years ahead. While much of what he sees is not rosy, I found it calming in a strange way. Accuracy. Recognition. Truth.
In leaning into the darkness of possibilities that seem inevitable, I discovered the sanity that lives beyond denial. I was reminded that the future is in our hands, in the choices we make day to day, in the stories we embrace each time we choose, whether that choice is conscious or not. What does this choice say about me? What am I supporting when I take this action or when I react in certain, less than stellar, ways? How do I sustain and maintain my awareness and my sanity? What new stories do I/will I embrace to call forth a new world?
Rumi’s wisdom speaks to me of the sanity necessary for navigating the crumbling complexities of our current world and for co-creating a new world. I’m not pointing to the ‘sanity’ of our legal system that judges whether someone is ‘competent’ or to sanity in our culture’s terms where we’ve come to dehumanize and render those who are different as ‘crazy’ (or worse).
Rather I’m pointing to the sanity that is wholeness.
In wholeness is our capacity to experience the depths of sorrow and despair, acknowledging the truth, the pain, the errors at the roots of this despair AND to embrace the pure joy of beauty, of Nature, of the miracles that are Life. Indeed, the beauty in that very sorrow and despair.
In wholeness is our capacity to see the nuggets of truth in all points of view, as well as to recognize and navigate in the paradoxes that life and truth offer.
In wholeness we find our knowing that we are One. One with our planet. One with Nature. One with one another, each and every One.
In wholeness is our capacity to co-create new stories, new agreements, new systems and structures, new ways of allowing what Life knows to guide us when we don’t yet clearly see the path ahead or even the next step to take.
In wholeness is the recognition that everything we create is based on story: family, community, country, systems, health, money, politics, art, business, home, EveryThing.
In wholeness is our recognition that our old stories of separation no longer serve because they are not the truth of who we are.
In wholeness is letting go of our old stories so that the new may rise.
In wholeness is sanity, embracing the story of your heart even (perhaps especially) when that story runs counter to the cultural stories that you may find yourself still swimming in.
What a Difference a Day Makes! 4-26-23