Look Closely
Everything healthy in me says to be present right here and stop looking back. Look closely, look up, kneel down if you want and look deep within, but enough already of looking back, at least until it is no longer an exercise in remorse and self-punishment.Is it early for wildflowers, or does this always happen now?
Yesterday lupines adorned my path, and mariposa lilies. Pausing and peering deeply into one of those lilies, I saw the beauty within the beauty, and it reminded me of the designs and patterns inherent in nature and the way that can take us in and steady us sometimes.
The other day, as I drove along Highway 101 past a very green field, I glimpsed a cow on the ground and two men were pulling a calf from it, a birth happening right there while traffic zoomed by, and on the radio there was a report from Boston, in this very moment weary of snow, and when I got home, the fragrance of orange and lemon blossoms was intoxicating, and of sage and ceanothus in bloom, and a handsome coyote looked up at me with mild disdain and bounded off.
How grateful I am for the sustenance of friendship. Last night, we had a perfect meal with good companions, and honest conversation about difficult things that somehow encompassed laughter too and happy events yet to come. We sat outside by a murmuring fountain as evening gently folded itself over the mountains, and after a few strokes on a yellow ukulele we said good night, and a billion bright stars blazed above us.
One of those friends, Dorothy, wrote a Valentine's poem that concluded with these beautiful lines:
Look at the sun,
Look at a green mountain.
Look into the eyes of those you love and into your own clear eyes.
A silvered glass can’t capture the infinite, translucent, mysterious light you are.
Everything healthy in me says stop prolonging the suffering by suffering. It says return to your work, re-inhabit your life, let the balm of forgiveness wash over all including yourself, look around, love life, and make all that has happened mean far more than just sorrow.