Life As Sacred Tasks

Fearless Bunny

Where things are moving too quickly, nothing can stabilize, gather, or grow. John O’Donohue (Anam Cara)

The sacred isn’t speedy. And speedy isn’t sacred.

The saying “take time to smell the roses” comes to mind this morning as I settle in to write. This week I’ve been present to the times when I experience the sacred in the tasks of daily life and when those sacred tasks become unpleasant chores to be rushed through.

Sometimes I catch myself urging Zadie Byrd to ‘hurry up ... I’ve got things to do’. I’m more present to the doing and completing than to self, to soul, to this canine being and to the sacred task of care for another. In this state I miss noticing the bunnies, the hummers, the blooms.

I lose that coherence when I rush to ‘get things done’ rather than being present to each as a sacred task in support of life, a life that I love.

What is the cost of dismissing the mundane in our rush to check things off our ‘to do’ lists?

I thought about this one recent morning when I found myself rushing through opening windows upon rising. I became aware of unconsciously doing the daily task rather than being present to greeting the day. Moving from one window to the next, I failed to greet the mountains and acknowledge the woods. Did I even see them?

With this awareness, I paused and retraced my steps, returning to each window to greet and thank the beauty and the beings that I’m blessed to live among. I chuckled, recalling that I’d recently mentioned to a friend how much I appreciate this summer morning ritual. I shared I was happy that maintaining a comfortable temperature in the home requires my attention rather than an automatic setting. Just as building a fire in the wood stove does each winter morning; opening windows, placing fans, and adjusting them as the sun’s angle changes connects me to the season, to Nature, to Gaia, the Cosmos, and their cycles.  By choice there is no Alexa, Siri, or smart thermostat to stand between me and Mother Nature.

How much sacredness do we lose to so-called convenience – personally and collectively? I think of the lost nutritional value, degradation of our health and the planet’s well being as a result of industrialized agriculture. What if we held the earth and her capacity to produce food as sacred? What if we held food as sacred and more robustly supported those who practice regenerative agriculture, providing fresh, nutritious foods? Just as is true for our souls, nourishing food ‘cannot stabilize, gather, and grow’ at warp speed.

The sacred isn’t speedy. And speedy isn’t sacred. What sacredness have we lost in other domains of life? How can we enjoy the comforts of life without offending or abusing the Natural world? How can I? How can we/I maintain the sacredness of life and its tasks with each sacred breath we breath?

Happy Hummers!

Beauty and The Beasts

Mother Mary Statue - Mother Mary’s Garden, San Luis, Colorado

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Rumi

I felt drawn to Rumi this morning and as I searched for his volume on the shelf another book caught my attention. Muse seemed less surprised than I when I opened Carolyn Baker’s Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse to a chapter that began with the above quote. Ahh, the magic of life.

The surprise continued as I read the first paragraph where Baker cites the John O’Donohue book I turn to often, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, quoting a line that I used here just a few weeks back:

When we walk the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us.

My smile meets Muse’s knowing twinkle. THIS is the magic of how life flows. THIS is life that dances and wants to rise. THIS is who we are.

I felt as if I’d come home to discover surprise guests, gifts both comforting and unsettling. I felt comfort in the wise words, of being reminded of the power of beauty, and of beauty’s existence in so many forms. When we look for beauty, it is either present to be discovered or we encounter a space, a longing where beauty beckons us to create its essence. As O’Donohue suggests, beauty comes to trust us when we hold reverence for her and for all life.

At the same time, I was present to the unsettled nature of this time and to inhabiting my own unsettledness. It feels to me as if the cacophonies of chaos are raising their voices in every domain of life. The pace toward and of the collapse of the world we have known seems to have quickened. We are gifted with the challenge of navigating life in uncharted waters. Beauty offers to light the path.

Navigation is both a solo journey and one of community. We each have our own path of inner work to engage as well as engaging in maintaining our daily life on the physical plane in outmoded, crumbling systems. This is no different for communities large and small. Each must reckon with the past, create its identity in the present, and maintain life as it looks ahead to new futures rising.

It is a time of beasts, but it need not be a time deficient of beauty. At the heart of the collapse of systems built on the lie of separation are the emergence of systems and structures built on the truth of unity, our interconnectedness with one another and with ALL of life. Our dance encompasses both – the dying along with all that is gestating and being born.

While we hospice the disintegration of that which we once knew, let us midwife the birth of that which wants to rise not from the greed of separation but from the true nature of our loving hearts.

Sunset Moon Over the San Luis Valley