Comings and Goings

Almost before my feet hit the floor I could feel the lump forming in my throat. Standing in the kitchen a few minutes later, the tears started to flow. Sad. Lonely. Discouraged. Those were the companions that greeted me yesterday morning. Feeling the urge to grab ahold of them, I took a slow, deep breath instead. Rather than attach myself to them, I quietly named them out loud. This created a tiny space between me and them. Instead of ramping them up a notch with an old story about what they might have to say about me and my life, I poured a cup of fresh French Press Coffee and took a sip. Tom showed up, poured some coffee, and sat next to me.

Climbing into the red pickup a few minutes later, we headed out to meet a friend at the bottom of the logging road we hike a couple of times each week. I invited my feelings to come along if they wanted, which apparently they did. Twenty minutes later we all headed up the 1.7 mile stretch of hallowed ground found on that ordinary dirt logging road. Three humans and two dogs, my emotions bringing up the rear.

Somewhere along the way my emotional companions must have taken another trail, because when we climbed back into the truck an hour later, they were nowhere to be found.

There was nothing to fix or mend or do with those feelings. They weren’t there to derail my day unless I let them. They simply needed to keep me company for a spell. The tears helped. The deep breaths helped. Naming them helped. Tom simply being there helped. A hike with a friend helped. And coffee helped (duh).

By inviting them along, they were free to take their leave.

The Sound Of Silence

Silence.

It has been one of the most profound markers of this global pandemic. Not simply the lack of surface noise, but the presence of a deep quiet. It is, as many have noted, as if the Earth is catching her breath. Not gasping for air, but quietly inhaling and exhaling in the way one does when in a deep and restful sleep.

It is as if silence is the container in which creation is meant to reside, and it must have been here all along, as in forever. But it took the absence of manmade sound for it to quietly slip into my awareness. In just 6 short weeks I have come to depend upon the presence of this ancient silence. It has permeated my interior landscape and quieted my inner thoughts, and I never want to lose it again.

This morning, for the first time in many weeks, that deep silence was broken. Shortly after sunrise the sounds of big equipment rang across the valley. Someone, somewhere nearby, was dropping trees and moving dirt, the sound of human voices raised above the mechanical din, and try as I might, I could no longer locate the silence. It has been punctured by the sounds of people engaged in work that must have felt important to them, and yet in that moment I was filled with the kind of sadness that accompanies the loss of someone or something precious.

It was grief, pure and simple. The silence was gone.

It was tempting to place blame on those doing the work, or find fault with the people pushing to lift the restrictions meant to safeguard us too quickly. Doing so would have felt far better than sitting with the sadness. However, as the equipment continued to do what it was doing, I tried to let that sadness do what it was doing. As painful as it is, our sadness always points us toward something we hold dear.

Even as I understand that we must carefully begin to emerge from this time of quarantine and sheltering-in-place, I am deeply afraid of losing what has been gained during this time of mutual sacrifice for the common good. Of forgetting what has been remembered, and of discarding what has been discovered. Silence is one such thing.

Whatever work was being done just beyond the trees surrounding our property came to an end. The sound of heavy equipment and the people operating it stopped, and there it was. The deep silence, that container within which we all reside, was still there. And it always will be. If I lose touch with it again, there is no one to blame but me.

Old Friends

It is fair to say that I am comfortable with melancholy. She is an old friend who has been with me for as long as I can remember. There have been chapters in my life where hers was a constant presence, in others she lingered in the shadows, but she is never too far away. I am so at ease with her that before I know it, I’ve welcomed her in, and allowed her to make herself way too comfortable. Sitting with her for too long, I forget that there is work to be done. The good and hard work of crafting a meaningful life, and becoming the person I am here to be.

In a recent and rich conversation with my spiritual director, Dane, we talked quite a bit about my longtime relationship with my old friend Mel. Today I was looking over my notes from that conversation and found these words:

Melancholy—

I know it.

I’m comfortable with it.

We are old friends.

For today, I will build you a fire and you can rest. I on the other hand, have work to do, and I don’t need your help.

You may not have a long and abiding friendship with melancholy, but my guess is that you might have some version of my story. Are there any old friends for whom you can build a fire and let them rest? Remember, we’ve got work to do.

(As always, with gratitude to you DA)

Photo by Jenna Hamra from Pexels