Welcome back to the Summer Sun series — brief, spiritual passages for a relaxed summer agenda. I hope you’re enjoying this approach to staying connected without a major time investment. After all, the flowers are blooming, and simply gazing at them can be a full-time occupation.
Most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities.
~Dalai Lama
Flower-gazing, bird-gazing, tree-gazing … such pursuits can feel compelling during the summer months. The flowers will be gone before we know it, we remind ourselves. The abundant green of summer will fade into hues of gold, brown, and red. So we look. And then look again, taking one more picture. Just one more.
Were the lilies quite as beautiful last year? Were the brilliant blooms as exquisite? Or was it all a dream, in fact?
It seems this dance of time is highlighted by the seasons, as though we are always being prepared for things that ultimately come and go. Human life, no different. Here for a few days (so it seems), then our form also dissolves. Impermanent, like the gracious lilies.
You must hear the bird’s song without attempting to render it into nouns and verbs. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
One approach is to let ourselves get locked into the concepts of life and death, forever questioning each, forever uncomfortable with the demands and mysteries of each. But at some point, as our spirituality takes root, we look beyond these definitions, these ideas, for something far more peaceful and lasting.
And with luck, we discover that our brief expression as individuals is a “flowering” of something we really can not identify. Only its sacred dimension can be perceived. Yet, perhaps that is enough. Perhaps that is all we need to know. Perhaps we can let go of limiting definitions, artificial time frames, and just surrender to “today.”
Sometimes you hear a voice through
the door calling you, as fish out of
water hear the waves, or a hunting
falcon hears the drum’s come back.
This turning toward what you deeply
love saves you. ~Rumi
We are graced by those we have loved.
Whether they are still here in the physical sense is one thing, but if they have been swept away by eternal forces, our minds want answers. Yet, there are none. So, again, we must look to our spiritual sense of knowing to grasp the deeper story — the one without divisions like life and death.
Blog posts by DazyDayWriter @ work in SunnyRoomStudio: all rights reserved.
