We tend to think in big hunks. All or nothing. A bowl of ice cream, not just a bite. Hours, rather than minutes. The whole enchilada. Burning bushes. Crossing the Rubicon. A year instead of a tiny powerful moment.
But we do not have to live this way. In fact, we might live more fully—more grounded in this sparkling Planet Earth—if we can cherish the dandelions.
This week has been punctuated by stories of cancers, familiars or loved ones dying, job losses, divorces, conflicts of all sorts, excruciating bodily pain, mental or emotional anguish; these are just a sampling of that to which I have borne personal witness. At large, in the world too, a barrage of homelessness, refugees, wars, slayings, despair, inequities of every stripe, wildfires run amok. How can we make our slice of difference in this kind of world?
We do so when we take two deep breaths, noticing the pause between them.
We do so when we offer to a soon-jobless stranger the number of a helpful, free job consulting service.
We do so when we make the small invitation to meet for coffee. Or to listen quietly on the phone.
We do so when we offer organic, innocent humor that mocks nobody.
We do so when we allow our veneer (…of professionalism, of helpfulness, of politeness…) to crumble and speak the persistent voice of our passion.
We do so when we send a short note of encouragement.
We do so when we choose not to mow down the dandelions in the dead-anyway-drought-grasses, allowing their golden clusters to brighten our inner (and outer) landscape.
It is these small plantings of seeds that keep us in balance. That keep us from tipping over into the impossibility of All-ness. It is this taking.a.bit.at.a.time that unsticks us from the muckplace and moves us back into the flow toward our passion and fullness.
These seemingly tiny movements create ripples that serve, that save, that savor.
(Orig. posted in 2014.)
