Written September 22, 2006 near a small forest in Pennsylvania:
Sometimes when I go out, standing at the edge of the forest, I feel it. There's a warmth that wells in my chest, just below my sternum.. It's a warmth, the warmth, I think we spend our lives searching for but come upon only rarely. I think it's the warming of completeness, the warmth of entirety.
I feel it when I am truly happy. And when I am sad, my chest feels like an empty cupboard and I seek to fill it with food.
Sitting at the edge of the forest, surrounded by the all-encompassing hug of crickets, cardinals singly chirping, at the same time it is both within me as I am in it. It silently accepts me, and if I get quiet enough, sometimes I can hear it marvelling back at me. Our souls lying together in perfect unity on the forest floor.
Many times, though, this energy is dead set on spreading itself from me; it radiates and reverberates in others. It is an offering, complete in all its intricate, innocent beauty.
It is so disconcerting the many times I've set out searching for it, only to feel as if I am running after my own shadow. Sometimes I run so fast I fall and as I'm picking myself up I remember to be patient, stand still, and let it come out of its hiding place.
And it does. It winks at me if I pay enough attention.
"I'm still here," it beckons.
Sometimes it hides in the eyes of others, looking out at me. These days I am happy, we are complete.
I try to live my life with an absolute intention to one day come to see the peace beneath the war we so often delude and lose ourselves in, the busyness we put ourselves through, trying to ignore what we cannot avoid.
I long for the day when we can be open enough as a people to see it in ourselves, to accept it and embrace it. Sometimes when I go out, I can feel the promise.
