Effervescent Morning

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Photo by Bradley M. Smith

"There are worlds within worlds, Crysta."  - Magi Lune, FernGully: The Last Rainforest

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If you're feeling stagnant, chances are you've lost your child-light. Want to re-kindle it?  Rise early and walk the tiny jeweled tightrope of Dawn.  

Francis Pongee said the purpose of poetry is "to nourish the spirit of man by giving him the cosmos to suckle".  

Dawn is poetry.  It dazzles.  It's as if the stars have fallen to earth - there's glitter everywhere!   

Look!

In the Meadow

Nebulas

Incubating

Stars.

Post #2, Attending the Queen

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Henry Miller said, "The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."

Thich Nhat Hanh said,  “The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will blossom like flowers.”

I adore Queen Anne's Lace.

This morning I am sitting in a foggy field of it. How fitting - the fog.  I am drunk with need for a pause and so wrenched by NO's, my heart feels like a Six-turn-San Diego-jam fishing knot. I need this moment of mingling with the Queen. I've felt her tap on my shoulder for a few days now, so I sense she has wisdom to share.  In my younger days, I would not have hesitated. In fact, I often got lost answering those calls. Letting go of my alienated sense of self gave me an air pocket to breathe in, so I swam deeply in the language of whatever I turned my heart toward. The Queen was a favorite subject. She polka-dotted ravines and bluffs and the sleepy fallow fields in-between. She laced herself along highways and back-roads and crossroads.  (Crossroads were mystical places to me, and I felt the significance of that without knowing how or why. After pondering it for awhile, I looked it up in the dictionary and discovered it is a place that is literally "neither here nor there".  It is "betwixt and between".  I loved that! I felt "between" myself - so I quickly added crossroads, betwixt and between to my word collection, and started a special notebook specifically and especially for all things in-between.)  The Queen lived and reigned as far as my adoring eye could see, untamed and unmuzzled, zippy and buoyant.    

"Mom, Dad and fussy gardeners everywhere - I can hear the shadowy music in your sighs; it pegs the migration of eyeballs rolling round eye sockets. I can feel the tapering slump of your shoulders, and see the question marks shaking from your head as you admonish: 'Kelly! Queen Anne's Lace is a weed! A weed, girl! A WEED!'"      : )

Maybe...but beauty and truth are born from silence, so I trust there is something to learn. And I can't help it - the queen makes my heart tickle and leap.  Yes, she is rampant and wild and uncultivated, but she is free, and she knows the merriment of Being, the Essence of Qui.  She bends, flexes and dances on the wind no matter it's shape, color or mood.  Her open palm waves good morning to me: "Hello! Over here! I'm Holding a space for you!" I take my seat and let mind-chatter drift away. Fully attending, I listen for the language she speaks. The curling wind lifts and shifts my hair around, allowing me to embody the timeless breath of God as it moves through her feathery, appreciative finger leaves. I wait quietly, differentiating music among wildflowers.  Ah, here it is! The music of this meeting: Breath of God Moving Through Green Fingers - melodious applause, sweet celebration.  

Sun has crested Tree-line and his clarity burns through the fog. A thousand queens lift their faces to him, mask-free and grinning from ear to ear. Stretching ever taller, the only intention is to be nearer, closer, connecting. A field full of floating white plates, rich offerings of bare naked joy - totally free of the need for approval or identity.  The queens speak the language of humility. They simply offer all they have, all they are, without desire for outcome. Utter devotion, all-embracing gratitude.  Ralph Waldo Emerson said Scatter Joy - and the Queen passes that vision, that "un-story", directly to me.

Her tiniest blossoms echo miniature bird nests, tightly woven and drawn inward, protecting. But the tender warmth of Sun's kiss inspires softening, and so, they begin the task of opening. I witness the depth and focus of their concentration. I sense the paradox of resting while striving, of doing by not-doing. A memory of Aesop's story, The North Wind and the Sun, bubbles up from within. Is it a message from the Queen?

I look even deeper. There are worlds within worlds here, dimensions of reality most people go lifetimes without noticing. "To see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower," William Blake wrote. See with your heart, get a new context. Herein lies the magic, the Qui: Tiny shifts about what is possible piggyback on fresh perspective. The most minuscule shift in perspective opens the door to small acts - and any act of adapting, no matter how small, evolves us. We are changed forever, ushered to profound leaps of imagination and intuitive breaches of insight. We are brought home to our souls, back to awe and wonder and our own inner knowing. I lengthen my breath, pleased that my deathbed review of life will carry a checked box next to the line that reads "attending the queen".

Breathing in, breathing out, I feel a sliver of softening unfold in my clenched and fisted heart.  Surrender is moving through me, loosening twists and knots and expanding me from the inside out. The NO's acquiesce toward Maybe, and separation blurs. For a time, we smile at Sun. We waltz on Wind. We offer up all we are under the gentle caress of Blue Sky. There is no "I" - only attendance and appreciation, and now - a YES.

I went into the field with plenty of knowledge. For all my troubles, I knew "what to do".  I had squadron-sized columns of words marching and beating drums through the hallways of my mind - and they were all dressed up in relevant suggestion. But robotic description leaves me feeling even more paralyzed. This act of simple sitting - of attending the Queen - catapults me over and beyond Mind's lifeless heap of chatter and into the field of silent experience. The field of wisdom and inner knowing. Experience is confrontation, participation - and I can embody that.  It is the "conversation with".  It is the Essence of Qui.

I rise and bow to the Queen. No words are needed. I lay my baggage at her feet and walk away. She has done her magic, helped me sort the seed from the dirt. Her essence of un-story has washed away my tiresome definitions, my flimsy rationalizations, and softened my jagged NO's. She calls out to my heart - reminds me that wisdom calls from unexpected places, and living wisely requires attending to that call - when it comes.  Next time, I vow not to shrug it aside. 

"Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.” 

- Janet Fitch, White Oleander