“The most exciting movement in nature is not progress, advance, but expansion and contraction, the opening and shutting of an eye, the heart, the mind. We throw our arms wide with a gesture of religion to the universe; we close them around a person. We explore and adventure for a while and then draw in to consolidate our gains.” ~Robert FrostI was talking with a friend yesterday who has just this year been diagnosed with cancer. She commented that what doesn't kill her makes her stronger. Everything–her perspective, her sense of herself, of security, the new focus on healing–has changed. Yet she looks out her window and kids are still going to school, the seasons change as always, life goes on. Living with both realities, she said, is difficult but comforting.
At Stake conference today, the visiting authority was speaking and told about a time when he was getting a drink of water from a fountain and a little boy came up to get a drink next to him. Every time the boy leaned down to get a drink this elder would release his button! The boy did this several times and never knew what was causing him to be sprayed in the face.
It reminded me of a rabbinic story I read online, an old one about a man who always kept two notes–both quotes from scripture–one in each of his coat pockets. The first one reminded him that “the world was created for you.” God set this glorious table of creation, all the wonders of the world, just for humans to experience and enjoy.
The second one reminded him that “from dust you came, and to dust you will return.” We are all so terribly impermanent, inconsequential…we come and go in an instant.
I love the thought of these folded up, crumpled notes keeping the wise man both inspired and grounded. I think about that story often. About opposites. And choosing between them.
Or not choosing between.
Sometimes I feel like I push different buttons:
Shy/friendly
Adventurous/cautious
Brave/scared
Serious/silly
Stressed/laid back
Hopeful/pessimistic
Mother/student
Seeking/content
To name a few.
In self-improvement mode, it is tempting to try to weed out some of those opposites. Yet choosing one or the other of the pair feels like I’ve left a little, important other part of me behind. Nature’s lessons seem to prove that life is not often an either/or situation but a swing between them: the quiet and sleeping winter, the bright vibrant summer; the rush of high tide and the exposing low tide; the dilation and contraction of eyes, hearts and hands.
True, some of them certainly require choices (the Garden of Eden comes to mind, for one. Choices between good and evil, another). But my memory makes me wonder if there is a kind of power in the combinations of some opposites. Maybe some of my buttons each deserve a place in a pocket.
