Keeping Our Center ~ Day 116

Listening up.  When our ears pay attention and take notice. When we can hear the snow falling. When we hear a solo bird sing, and then swell to a morning symphony. When we can hear the current of the river, the lap of the sea. When we can hear pirouetting golden leaves spiral down to the ground to await the crunch.

Listening up. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. The stones are shouting like a Greek chorus. The beat of our heart is no longer just a pulse, but a profound conversation, a dialogue with the Divine. Our longings are singing. Our yearnings hum. Our deepest desires simply sigh.

Listening up occurs when we stop. When we choose to locate our souls, bear witness to the Truth, and follow our hearts home. Listening up is a climb, a hike, a journey, and it instinctually seeks higher ground. It is the voice on the mountain top which begs for us to know we are deeply beloved. It is the voice of Mother Earth, whispering in our ear that we are already more than enough.

Listening up is a parent’s love, which allows their child’s tears to roll down their cheek, and which they alone can hear -- the slow gentle flow of the rivulet.

Listening up is a lullaby. It is words coated with such thick kindness and mercy, it can catch the wind, caress the soul, and tells all about once UPON a time. UPON time is where eternity resides, and when we know just how blessed is this Life of ours – the all of it. It is the silence in the song, and the lull between the shattering, and the calm before and after and during the storm.

Listening up is the holy hush, and the orbit end, when the globe ceases to spin for a second, and simply says aah. A long courageous holding of its breath. A pause to truly refresh. A second and third and fourth and fifth wind. A transforming moment. A wee bit of eternity which has exploded as an epiphany, or revelation.

We live in a most noisy time. So many lies and scams and bad jokes. So much bragging and bullying and beating up on one another. So much arrogance and ignorance. So much pure unadulterated foolishness. So much wasting of shards of lovely days. So much silly prancing about as if we have even the remotest iota of an answer.

We strut about as if we have the plumes of a peacock, when in truth, we have none, and are in fact, well, mostly ass.

A good way to hold our center, restore our soul, and protect our sanity, is to daily decide to listen up. It is quite simple – really. Just shut-up and simultaneously open up, and receive the day. The magnificent gift of the Present. The shimmering possibility to be alive and awake and aware.

The day has so much to say, when we aren’t trying to prove our worth, or make a name for ourselves, or explain all the Truth we think we know but fail to live. The Word speaks into the swirling core of our crazy words, a chaotic jumble of proving our points and making our case and being a somebody – which God knows, we have always already been, even before we were born.

Maybe the best way to listen up, is to imagine for a moment, what it would be like to LISTEN DOWN. Images of giant black holes, and a din of whine, and a sense of not being able to even hear ourselves think. It is a death before death. Listening up is a choice to live fully now. To be on the up and up. To jump for joy. To leap with faith. To be born again and again and again.

Tough choice? I don’t think so. Just a wise one. 

Bill Grimbol