How foolish is it to have too much faith? I asked myself that question several
months ago when this whole waiting process began.
At first I was uncomfortable about not knowing where I’d be living in a month or three. As the
days turned to weeks, and then to months, though, it became ordinary to not know. The feeling of ungroundedness became
a companion rather than an enemy. I began to feel so haughty in my spiritual
practice of just being present; after all, I was mostly peaceful. (It is
commendable, we say, to not be sure of something and yet to feel okay with that
unknowing.) The questions began as small piles of debris but grew into a
mountain of uncertainty, a terrain of exploration. Head north or south? Search for permanence or more temporariness? Seek
opportunity for community or isolation in the desert? The hazards and
disruptions of living in the near reaches of Los Angeles mounted, too: erratic drivers, daily neighborhood
leaf-blowers, passersby who don’t make eye contact, the natural world unnaturally contained in cement and planters. The
questions and the disruptions added up to create a daily tapestry nubbled with a
peaceful feeling about the Unknown, but splotched with the angsty compulsion to
flee. The city is just not for me. I knew that when I came back here. I know
that even better now. Peace, flight: these two reigned.
* * *
I need room to
roam. I need skies that are free of the lacerations of power lines. My heart
cries out for birdsong and swaying tree limbs, grass that grows tall, fields
and vistas and unpeopled nature.
I am bent over,
thighs folded on calves, resting on heels, balanced on toes. Left and right
hands lie flat on muck, beautiful mud that borders the water of the wetland. I
gently close my eyes, hear my dog sniff the fecund ground on which we are
tentatively perched. And the sound of birds whose names I know not, sing with
clear voices that immediately bring tears to my eyes. Cool, wet soil, strands
of grasses and small pebbles – another type of nubbled texture. And peace
becomes friends with rootedness. In an inexplicable instant, I feel that I am at home – even though I am
squatting in a place I’ve never been, nearly halfway between what was home for
decades and what was home for the past few months…hundreds of miles from both.
Oh, life is
unsure. I cannot imagine that my transient lifestyle will suddenly be quelled
by relocation to a community of seventy thousand people and a wildlife
preserve. But I can totally imagine how this place can become home for a while,
an indefinite span of experiences and relationships, engagements and
commitments, seasons and growth. Because I have largely given up an old
tendency to cling to what I want to believe that I know, I can call this new
place “home.” I don’t have to pretend I’ll stay forever or have found some
magic answer, an elixir to the unpopular “transience factor.” But I can
definitely embrace this place, the land and birds and radiantly orange sunsets
over fields and wetlands. I can embrace it not as something “known” in the
sense of permanence or fixedness, but as a rooting-in to an inner truth of knowing:
I know that I will be alright.
I suspect that
nothing is permanent; it is all just temporary. If I can remember this then I
can embrace what is happening now with open arms, receptive palms, a heart full
of compassion and enthusiasm. Without worrying about tomorrow I can live fully
today. Isn’t this what most of the
wisdom traditions teach us? How about I just vow to root deeper into this hour,
to call this moment home, to leave
behind false notions of permanence and transience…in service to peace – which
comes only when my clenching hold on outcome relaxes into the inspiration of
the moment.
It is not
foolish to have too much faith. Knowing is just pretense but faith requires
finding home in what we cannot prove in the usual linear ways. Faith lives in
the heart. Hearth. Home.
All blog photographs taken by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
