Maybe It's Not False Assurance

What moves us, from the outside and from within.

The breeze is blowing, and I feel it against my skin. It doesn’t move through me but past me, around me. Then, the feeling of the air blowing my hair and the gentle push and pull on my limbs subsides. It’s leaving as quiet as it’s coming. Where does it go, and to where does it return? 

On my left, stalks of white yarrow bob in the summer afternoon air. They border the path, bending over for sunlight to kiss them more directly, stretching their necks beyond the shade of the tall olive tree. The neighbor’s windchime is singing. The breeze plucks subtle fingers on the chime’s shell. And now it’s stopped, but bugs are humming in the flowers behind me. And the pittosporums are waving merrily in the breeze again. The bugs have gone sleepy and quiet, too.

It’s approaching 3 p.m. this summer day in July. The three kids are home, inside, and I am out–the days of their visiting us are numbered. This summer, I do the mom things I have always done but differently now–keeping the cupboard and refrigerator stocked with food, inviting conversation and trying not to control where it leads. Our dog Fulton, my shadow, is beneath my legs. He is old, and my heart tries to be here, present for the glory of all these gifts–the shifting, the beginnings and the ends.

I think of all these bodies and spirits inhabiting space together–and how we push and pull against one another, like the wind, making each other move with our looks, motives, and dreams. But not through us. What can move through us? What can make us move but not penetrate the deeper spaces we inhabit? How will we let ourselves be moved not just from outside us but from within?

As I age, I am comforted by all my questions and their lack of answers. I am comforted by uncertainty, possibility’s flexibility, and things that have not yet unfolded but could, just maybe, if we waited long enough. I want to see where both uncertainty and possibility go.

I am discovering patience and stillness. The gift of sitting and doing nothing opens up the world within me that deserves listening. There is much I do not know, and I am unafraid to live in that space of not knowing. Pretending I know more than I do makes the world I know, the depths of wonder, shallow. And I crave both the small and lovely and the vast and mysterious–all that pushes and pulls and does not go through. 

Oh, why won’t you go through?

What a miracle you are. What a miracle I am. The tension is familiar, and I am trying to understand what it means to be a miracle, loved like I am, and alive. I have spent much of my life trying to figure out how to get better at living–convinced I am not doing it right. But I can’t figure it out. Life threatens to escape me, and all the while, I practice this summer day, all my days, in letting it go. 

For life to move through me, not just against me, trapping me in its black-and-white rules of decision and exactitude and theory, perhaps I will read more stories and poems, listen to more birdsong and the rush of summer wind. Perhaps I will ignore the stacks of self-help books–in my closet, the bedside table, and the top of the stairs. Perhaps I will take more walks barefoot and water flowers. Perhaps I will slice watermelon and skip holding my friends’ hands. Perhaps I will spend more time dreaming and wondering, imagining and playing. Perhaps I will reach out these hands and be the song that is around me, everywhere, singing:

I love you, I love you, in all the wind’s songs, you are immeasurable in miracle: you are mine.

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). 

“I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14).

Do not deny the source of your being. Return to the source of your creation, the source of love that holds you together. To deny by what and by whom you were made is to live untethered and alone. Despite what the world teaches you, you are whole, strong, and free–you are on solid ground–when you live inside of Me.

What rules push and pull you? What are you allowing to move through you? What are you letting go?