Being Peaceful

A divine display, a marriage of water and world greeted me when I stepped outside yesterday morning. I had turned to enter my "secret garden," and it stopped me in my tracks sending me back indoors to grab the camera.

"I have to try..." I told myself, not at all confident that this play of light on suede-soft leaf, these gleaming rain beads would translate to film. Well, as is so often true of macro shots, I later found that more than met the eye had been captured. Honestly, it's as if my eye says "Oh, something lovely..." while unbeknownst to me I have been seduced, sufficiently hypnotized by the presenting "Lovely" into getting my camera out so that She might succeed at having me see even beyond what I see. Yet again, another Lovely has dazzled me, and moved me to tell about it.

I love how photography offers the gift of keeping: keeping something which is transient, everchanging, according to the movements of wind, of earth, of time. I met this sparkling Lovely yesterday when I knew I would soon leave for the day. I knew that by the time I returned in the afternoon, every droplet of rainwater bejewelling my garden would be long gone. If I wanted it preserved, it had to be now.

I'm glad that I managed to "keep" the hosta. As for the peach-colored iris: I regret there wasn't time for her. By the time she caught my eye, on the way to the car, it was too late. Her glitter of raindrops, her glow and glisten in just-right light, would be lost. I noticed two tight buds on her stalk as I started the car, and hoped for another chance at another time. But if I've learned one thing in these last few years of taking pictures--of pictures "taking me"-- it's this: there are no second chances. If I don't have camera in hand when I happen upon a beauty, a marvel, a magnificence begging to be held in regard again and again over time, I can kiss it goodbye. There is the illusion of returning, of sameness. I see it in the behavior of the perennials in my garden, for example. Yes, they return each year. But their array, their display from one year to the next is never the same.

I pass through the Open Doors book and gift store to get to the Reiki room where I treat clients on Thursdays. Yesterday, a Buddha figurine caught my eye on the way through. I swore it had to be new to the store; either that, or it had escaped my notice every week since January. In either case, this day, not unlike the rain-quenched hosta, it beckoned me, and I bought it. I've long thought I might like to own one; I've admired such icons in other settings and appreciated their pacifying effect. But none before this one compelled me enough to buy it.

My little Buddha sits now in the most trafficked room in the house, and in a single day has bestilled me numerous times. A mere glimpse of him accomplishes this, returns me to the ground of clarity beneath my "ordinary," everyday awareness: I am struck peaceful. Just as the glimpse of a few square pristine inches of yesterday morning's Love in motion struck me peaceful, and so I've placed its image on my computer desktop where I am sure to see it often.

I behold this scattering and ordering of plump and perfect drops reflecting or glinting with sunlight, these precious gleaming pearls and wonder: why do I ever struggle with Life? Why would I ever pass even a moment in consternation or concern? I wonder why I ever do other than give Love Its way. It is so clear how struggle is all of my making and rises from my foolish interference with the fine order of things. That is to say that looking at this demonstration by Life (by Love) of its "All is well"-ness in an instant awakens, rouses me from my deluded slumber, opens me into the fullness of the freedom that is, always, underneath/within/as It All.

I saw this--was this--while giving Reiki yesterday. It came to me all at once--overtook me, really. "Be peaceful, dear," I heard, "it's all taken care of." That just-being was allowed to be because I drew no cloak or veil over it. And so I stood for a time as embodiment, possessed, of the words that arose to represent it. I stood being peaceful, knowing all is taken care of. Being, that is to say, no different from the leaf, the rain, the iris, the drifting cloud: One Life in many particles passing flawlessly, equanimously, from one moment to the next to the next. Just so.