Saturday, June 25, 2016

A Moment in an Ordinary Life


Crystalline shards of champagne colored light pierced the Earth and the mists of a gray sky slips silently into a pure sea of cerulean blue.  Trance-like I was struck by the awe and beauty in the midst of a very ordinary morning drive.  Curious, there was a human form still and prone on the sidewalk.  Draped she was, in black and red coat and now very crumpled hat near a walker now crashed against a wall just beyond the sidewalk.  My heart slipped into a less bright space at the tragic sight.  A lone policeman entered my vision, obviously called to her rescue, thank goodness.  Sigh and swift breath in and the trees caught my attention again as I flowed with the traffic along the road like a metal moving stream.  Black car weaves in and out of the lines while blue car swerves to miss something in the way.  The pavement sparkles in morning’s first light in between dancing shadows looming large still as we all go.

In unison we move oblivious to each other and I find that ever more curious still.  There is such diversity crashing into the breath of one single moment here but no one seems to notice it.  It seems sometimes I stand like a still figure in the frame of a slow motion movie where all is swirling, moving and chaotic.  I breathe in slowly and then let go.   I follow the dance of dark and light in some chain-reaction motion and commotion that never seems to stop and then I wonder how it is I could feel so distant wrapped in a warm cocoon of silence as all around me stirs.  It must be the achievement of my 86th day of meditation without break that allows me now to step out of the stream and witness from both within and without.  Every more curiouser my consciousness grows

What an interesting sensation this space between heartbeats,; between breaths and choice?  Would that I could stay here but I know myself all too well.  In just a moment here or there an emotion will sweep in undetected until it is by far too late and I’ll slip out of this quiet space and flow again in the stream of life looking back and remembering the silent stillness of the conscious pause I was some how able to take.  I’ll be glad for the moment’s peaceful pause and the infinite strength and peace that it brought me.  Life is chaotic, agitating, invigorating and ultimately wonderful.  We just need to continually remain open to the unexpected.  Maybe decide to allow new experiences and ever greater compassion to set into our souls along with an ever increasing capacity for understanding what is with a keen awareness that does not resist the flow.

I pause again now as my thoughts wish to settle into the warm sunny dance of these beautiful rays of morning light.  It’s just another day in an extraordinary moment of an ordinary life.

© 2016 Jaie Hart (photo/words)

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