I don’t want to live in
the close-ended questions:
When will…?
Are we going to…?
If so, when?
How many…?
Am I _______ enough…?
Who is…?
And these questions stifle
me. They draw my breath into them so I have no air left to live in, to inhale.
I am stripped of vitality and passion as well as fortified against “the
emergent” when I focus so narrowly.
Instead, I want to live
into, draw breath from and breathe into questions that are about practices,
spontaneity, flow, richness and depth, texture and light.
How can we co-create a
life, out of our individual strengths, that adds compassion to this world? In
what ways can we begin to conceive of the collective and our role in that?
How can we model the ebb
and flow of our lives after seasons and cycles so that:
“gaps” become interstices;
“redundancy” becomes the
rich ecotone of layered experience;
“separation” becomes an
opportunity for rich solitary inquiry;
“fondness” becomes
acceptance of all beings as we are, limiting judgment;
“frustration” becomes an
honoring of the beauty in difference;
“callousness” becomes a
turning point for the arising of compassion;
“fear” becomes openness;
“anger” becomes softness
and vulnerability;
“angst” becomes faith,
trust, and then peace?
I want to remember that
the osprey will come back, year after year to nest atop the platform at the
local park. I want to recall in the darkness of winter that there will be
another springtime. During summer’s long days, I want to recall the darkness in
the corner of my own soul. It is my desire to reach out with a wide embrace,
challenging my own limiting thoughts and behaviors so that I may engage Life
open-endedly. I begin by reframing the questions from close-ended,
simple-answered ones to those that weave together strands of body, psyche, mind,
and spirit…so that it is with wholeness that I greet the world each morning.
To paraphrase EB White:
Each morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to
savor it. The only way I can savor this one life I have is to balk at the urge
to shut down, and to practice opening, again and again, to the largeness and
even the un-answerability of open-ended questions. It is a practice, a mantra,
a fervent hope carried in the seed of my heart.
(Full blog orig. posted on
4.27.12)
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2017 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
