green and gold

Yesterday I drove through a stunning landscape of gold and green. Lush vineyards and golden hills. Some vines have lovely scattered flowers growing underneath. Those make me smile. The rows of vines are so orderly. They feed my need for structure and organization and make me feel calm. I can only imagine the amount of water absorbed in these green leaves and cherished vines blanketing the hills, blooming grapes of such value and precious substance.

I saw in the distance, the hills in recovery from the fires that scorched them a few years ago. Life can be fragile, precious, but it is also often amazingly resilient and keeps going and growing back even when burned and blackened by fire. We can learn this lesson of renewal from fire and nature.

I thought of a long lost friend who has burn scars over much of her body from a car fire. I thought of the stories she told me of her long, excruciating recovery as her burned skin was tended and recovering. She told me of the kindness showered upon her by so many in the miracle of coming back into her life through her years of healing. I heard her deeply, my eyes pooled with tears of her story, but I cannot begin to understand what she actually went through or the size of the actual miracle that she was existing in front of me. Sometimes in the pain I feel over her severing of our friendship and my disbelief about it, I am still grateful that I got to know her for the time that I did. Some friends don’t stay in our lives, even though they live in our hearts.

On one level, I see how anytime I’ve shed people from my life, it is about me and not about them. I notice when I am unable to conduct myself in a healthy way that feels good to me after trying over and over. I decide to remove myself from the situation if I’m not able to find a good way to be kind and loving to myself. On another hand, it always hurts me when someone I love is no longer in my life, however that happens. That hurt is often the love that exists, but has no where to go or has become un-receivable. I keep learning how to give that love back to myself.

In this case, I made a decision to walk away from a group that was no longer healthy for me. This friend was part of that group. I thought our friendship would survive my change, but I was wrong. Our friendship, and many others, did not survive my decision to take my life in a different direction. For so many years, I felt so hurt and victimized by the consequences of that decision. I do see that it was all my decision, all in alignment and all for the best.

The moments we remember and forget and remember again are fascinating to me. What allows the details I remember about people I’ve known at all different stages of my life to bubble up at certain times? I then think about all the things that I never knew about them and will never know. I wonder about all the missed opportunities to be curious about another person’s inner world and become open to new perspectives. Beyond my own influence, what are the energies and forces that bring people into and out of my life? What allows certain people to draw out different sides and aspects of me and what prevents me from revealing certain parts of myself to certain people? Subtle energies and vibrations, the way things flow freely, smoothly, awkwardly, erratically or not at all. The way it can feel completely comfortable, then utterly unbearable, and then all is forgotten over time, until it’s not.

I see my part in it all, I feel my agency and my awkwardness. I’m also aware of the mystery of moments and how no one is really ever in control of anyone or anything even though we often try so hard for a sense or story of control.

My current journey is organizing myself and my cells around the ongoing discovery of mystery rather than around efforting to be in control of anything. It’s a never-ending discovery of the web of control I’ve woven over everything. I value spidery ways and the webs that bridge lives together. I also value trying to understand unweaving, letting go, and allowing the process to unfold as peacefully as it may.