Quote For The Day

“In the river of time out of time, it is perfectly appropriate to stow your oars and float for a while. Then you reach your destination rested, refreshed and ready for the next best thing.”

florence ondré

“Water, Water, Everywhere…”

This week’s birthday brought gifts of deeper insight that have been coalescing since hurricane sandy wiped out so much more than home and community.  Layer by layer, like flaky pastry, they have risen with tasty tidbits of evolution.

In a sacred space of quiet allowing; sitting still in Spring, thoughts tip toe up the steps of consciousness; ascending to aha light of day.

Among the threads in this tapestried garden, bloomed a realization.

I have always loved living near water, seeing, hearing and being around and in water.

No matter where I may travel, I’ve always been drawn to oceans, rivers, falls, lakes, streams and rilles.

These waters have always soothed, stirred and satisfied something in my soul.

…up until the ocean and bay rose up on October 29,2012, as I watched their massive powers obliterate everything before my eyes.

In this stunning performance, without applause or appreciation, I shut down.  Gasps of shock choked into unshed tears and withheld words; worlds of feelings numbed and an unknown dread was seeded.

In the aftermath of fire and flood, barely looking at the receded Atlantic; back asleep in her bed after a nightmare brawl, sent tremors through exhaustion of body, mind and spirit.  This life long friend had turned enemy  and I could not get back the friendly feelings.

At first this feeling went unacknowledged but for nanoseconds under immediacy of slogging out a base and brutal survival.

Devastation and homelessness ruptured our relationship, the sea and I.

It felt almost affront to see bright sunshine on gently lapping waves softly touching shore the day after destruction, like a child after a smashing tantrum tendering a small voiced apology, as parents clean up the mess made.

“Well, that’s not gonna do it, kiddo!” I thought, as all sorts of community service for the crime whooshed in and out my addled pate.  “Thanks for saying, sorry but dang! You have a lot of amends to make here!”

Pretty became poison, leaving me with a large “Huh?”; the kind one might feel when being blindsided with a two by four to the head, just before hitting the ground facedown; expression flattened and out for the count.

Over the ensuing months of manmade good and awful; after the assault and victimizing the victims by insurance companies and government agencies created to help yet chose hindering; after people one barely or never knew stepped in, neighbor to neighbor, for what really was needed, I discovered underneath the chaos and cacaphony of wild weather and machines, that I’d become afraid of that ocean which had buoyed my spirit; bathed my body in blessed brine; borne my children aloft on wavy crests, surfboarding them to a serene and honoring relationship with the rhythms of nature and gave our community multileveled pleasure and beauty of a very special place in which to join together and raise families in a healthy environment.  The beaches, the boardwalk, the city by the sea  was now only a distant memory glimpsed through a tube of turmoil.

I could only survive and shield my heart by averting my eyes and shutting off emotions.  ‘Maybe if I don’t think of it, it will go away.’

As time moved on, I realized that I had to make friends again with this salty elephant in the living room.  Since I didn’t have that room in my home anymore, it  would have to be the outside living room in which I needed to actually coexist again.

‘Act as if’ kicked off this Super Bowl of  healing and remained in residence until I could breathe  and look at bodies of water without wanting to run or cry.

“What was I thinking all those years of loving water?” crept the question upon edges of consciousness.  It felt like a death had taken place but was really more of a divorce; both of us were still living– and in close proximity to boot!

For sanity and health, one day I put a toe in the water and talked with the ocean; apologizing for blanketed anger,  blame  and tie-severing and allowed the sea to simply be the sea without personalizing it with premeditative murder.

“Perhaps you were part a greater purpose for it all,” I whispered., as I remembered that ‘on every point of pain we grow.’

I’ve taken inner space for myself since my space of  ‘home’  used to be and now isn’t.

I don’t  jump in water with my former joy and abandon these days; trusting that we are one.

Yet, on this year’s birthday of  last week, with a bit of distance between then and now, these thoughts appeared as Angel’s gifts of insight.

One morning, as  I stood over a sink, drinking my morning spring water; sipping – not chugging it down as if it were a post storm disliked chore. I remembered that I like water; that it is a natural thing to like because I am water.

A significant part of the human body is water.  Salt water oceans make up 71% of the Earth’s surface.  Add to that freshwater lakes and glaciers and that takes me back to reframing the question from, “Why do I love water?” to “Why wouldn’t I like water?!”  It is the essence of life and me!

With this in mind, not liking water might translate into not liking my own self.

And when I get dehydrated from withholding what is clearly needed for all life, I become ill.

So, let me lift a glass of spring water to enrich my body, mind and spirit daily and thank water for coming to nourish me to optimal health.  Let me say thank you to the blessing of a hot shower at the end of every day.  Let me gaze upon bodies of water and thank them for being.

May I remember that I love the water pouring down on the Earth school.  I love hearing the patter on the roof in a soft rainy day, reminding me that flowers of all colors and green leafy trees and plants  are replenishing their health and survival.  Even storms, scary though they may be, are cleansing and purposeful and the challenges presented in their visits are lessons we may need to see.

Nowhere is it written I have to like it all or won’t have slips on the stay positive path to recovery.

For today, I am reminded of being grateful for the essence of who I am.  That which is part of us all.

And that can’t be all bad.

Though I cannot control the ocean, I can look at it now and say, “Thank you for being.  I’ll come visit you at your place. You’ve seen what a wreck mine is and you have more room for visiting than I.”

In a broken, thirsty  heart there is now more and different space for love.

I call tears liquid prayer and can once again call water everywhere..liquid light.

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