Some have called it a beginner’s mind. I think it is an openness to the open road. It is the element that we tread in as we rest and reach to the futures we imagine. Maybe imagination is the space I am describing. It is the interplay of our dreams, our passions and constant attentiveness to the now ever present moments, at lunch or walking with someone, that elicit a smile and an assurance that we are safe in spite of our own insecurities.
I was with my friends venturing up the coast this past week and was struck by beauty. Beauty you could cut with a butter knife, even feel in your lungs. Everything was striking including the people I was with. But what is striking me now, is how these moments float by without us breathing them in confidently. I am not so much lamenting missed oppertunity but rather exploring why it is I am not in constant wonder, awareness, seeing the stuff of life. I was sitting on a rock next to the ocean at night with Janna. Everyone had scattered climbing on boulders, being touched by the surf and we sat and watched the sky open as clouds vacated, leaving the stars exposed. The dust of the sky had settled and it was dazzling. We sat on the firm rock and the ocean reached close, as if to remind us that the stability of the rock was temporal. Steph was walking the shores and getting soaked, she loves the water. The scene was epic and cold, yet safe, on the edge of water that touched the shores of billions wondering with us. The sky and the sea blow my categories wide open, like pain and loneliness. They invite a kind of connected distractedness that pulls toward awareness… childlikeness. Observing for wonders sake, unlike adults explaining it all away.
And maybe children are not as aware as adults, Jesus might say otherwise. My friends and I were reflecting on the fact that we were acting like kids a good portion of our trip, while at the same time acknowledging adulthood as something whole, honest and deeply connected to our true-selves. Our journeys include childlike abandonment, however short it may have been for some of us. We began in innocence with open eyes trying to take in all in, abandoning ourselves to trust and honesty. But then we were stifled by expectations and lies that whispered we were unloveable-unknowable, by ourselves and by others. The truth I am learning is that being known just might be the hardest, yet most fundamental step in returning to innocence. That place where you take in the beautific visions of the everyday with childlike embrace.
Also I am learning, with a heavier awareness that there is no rush. Becoming is process, and looking back and telling stories is more than half the fun. I’ll never regret walking forward:
up or down over and pass
i’m slowing my stride so i might last
this day and to the ground
resting amidst the sound
of being know and venturing out
of loving and visions abound
so give us eyes and the space
to be aware of your place
in us and us with you
toward what it is to be new
