New awareness

The first day of the New Year, 2005.

May love fall upon everyone. May the fear in our hearts lessen. May the grief still present in those people who have loss children, partners, parents and friends during the past year diminish enough to allow for them to peacefully entry into this new year.

There is still much beauty available to all of us. Our yearning for love; our desire to be loved is an affirmation of the goodness of our past loves.

The potential of this new year is vast. I am excited.

And, who knows the form love will take when it walks into our life again?

At the beach yesterday, I built an arch of stones. (Dear reader, it’s the stones I want you to look at!)

Earlier, having been preoccupied with the news of the ever increasing number of people killed during the Indian Ocean tsunami, and, being restless, I started to pile stones together to settle the dark rumblings within my heart and mind. Looking at the finished arch with its keystone firmly wedged into place between the thirty stones, a small awareness, a bit of wisdom emerged.

Sometimes I feel that the financial, social, emotional and artistic pressures in my life are too much to bear at times; that I am at the breaking point more often than not and want to ease the burden, the weight on my shoulders and heart so to speak.

But looking at these stones, one cannot begin to recognise a simple truth: that their ability to gracefully curve; their ability to hang delicately in space, is the result of pressure. Without the weight of the keystone pushing down relentlessly onto the other stones, all would collapse into a pile of little value.

There is a purpose in this pressure. It is not my, or anyone’s, role to totally rid oneself of life’s pressures because that is do deny the role life has in shaping us; in developing our character.

Living a life “totally” free of burden would be a life too light, too carefree. There would be nothing to give it shape and help hold it together.

A priest was once given the opportunity to slay the devil and free the world of the devil’s darkness and influences. But in the end, the priest let him free because he knew that the devil served a purpose in making us compassionate, tolerant and, ultimately, more loving.

The key is to harness the forces of life, both light and dark, and use them in ways that sustain our lives and open us up into expressions of grace and strength.

Then, and only then, will beauty walk beneath our arching, slightly aching outstretched arms, through and into a more real embrace.