On Connecting...
I've been without internet and cell phone for a while now, partly due to being in the mountains, and partly due to my ancient laptop. I've been able to read my FaceBook on the IPhone, but for some reason it hasn't wanted to upload the videos I've taken. I have found myself frustrated, feeling disconnected, and unable to share. All this while being held in the bosom of the mountains, in the cradle of life itself, hiking and sitting and being. I feel the irony of it, and ask myself - to what, or to whom, am I connected?
The past few days we've been visiting a dear friend and are off to visit another today. We've had long talks and the kind of quiet that only comes with intimate friendship. I have felt so wonderfully fed, connected and nurtured in this time. So here I am, again, in the heart of the most gracious hospitality and loving friendship - yet I'm concerned that I'm not connected! I went and got our laptop fixed today, so I can post and read and be connected!
Since all I have been able to do is leisurely read my FaceBook, I am amazed at how fed I am by the comments, sharing, and general wisdom that abounds among my friends and acquaintances. I love reading what inspires people and what they are thinking about. I love seeing the whacky videos and the requests for prayer. And I love seeing how people reach out to each other across the lines in support, in joy, and in silliness.
Truly, we are all connected in so many ways. We are connected to life by our breath, by the sunshine as it nourishes the earth, and by the essence of the life around us. Simply taking the time to be in the midst of this beauty, reminds me how inextricably connected I am to the whole. This connection is grand and majestic and awesome. It invites me to spiritual greatness while feeling the humility of being a part of such a vast Infinite Reality.
Being in the presence of friends and loved ones, being truly present, allows me to feel that intimate connection, the union of souls, in which Namaste isn't just a spiritual fad, but a lived, felt experience. This connection is nurturing to my fragile, human side. I realize that we do not walk on this earth alone, unless we purposefully shut others out. Our chronic cultural sense of isolation and alienation comes from the guarded life we live in our anonymous cities and crowded shopping malls. Connecting with intimacy and openness is a balm for our spirit's relentless seeking, striving, and wanting to create a better life for ourselves and others.
And staying connected across the miles is a new found joy, as long as it doesn't substitute for the connections of the here and now. Finding myself embedded in an abundant humanity - not the stunted, sarcastic, dramatic, dysfunctional nonsense we are bombarded with through our entertainment machine, but the witty, warm, insightful, funny, crazy, committed, unique and precious reality that is human nature at its fullest - invites me to openly express my own unique "spiritual being having a human experience".
Ultimately I realized that through each of these avenues I am connected to Spirit - God - the Whole - in more ways that I can truly imagine. While staying connected through spiritual practice is powerfully important, I realize that my whole life is connected. Each breath, each waking moment is connected to the Whole. Every conversation, email exchange, or phone call is connection happening. Every walk in the woods or jog in the park, every smile, every moment of beholding beauty, every opportunity to share pain, everything invites me to remember that I am already connected.
Let's stay connected!
How very beautifully put! My husband & I moved way out in the country in Upstate NY from Dallas/Garland, TX about 12 yrs ago. We are now moving back to the Dallas area. As I pack and contemplate the last 12 yrs. I realize how lonely we have been in some ways. We HAVE made new friends, and kept the old, but here, we don't watch TV news or bad movies laced with hard-sell advertising - life is just slow paced and visits are the WAY we connect. I have to think that we have been growing on the INSIDE while we are here and that the space we created 12 yrs ago is just what we needed to do, as the new space we will create is exactly what we need to do. We are ready now, to re-connect in NEW ways. the space has made us careful of how we use our time and energy. It's all perfect exactly the way it is and it's ALL connected for sure! Thanks!
1 year ago/j/