Keeping Our Center ~ Day 49

Did we really know how important community was before we were forced to self-isolate? Before this virus, did we think about what it would mean to be suddenly separated from our church community, our card clubs, our book groups, our walking group, our band, or support group… not to mention our families, friends and neighbors? Truthfully, we probably took them all for granted, at least to some extent.

Mark Nepo, in his book The Exquisite Risk, tells a story about an apprentice and a master:

“No matter who the apprentice talked to, if she listened close enough and long enough, the words all went back to the same source, as if there were only one large thing speaking. No matter how many eyes she looked deeply into, they all eventually revealed the same shimmer, as if there were only one large thing seeing. No matter how many pains she soothed, the cries all sounded from the same human hurt, as if there were only one large thing feeling.

When she brought all this to her master, her master walked her in silence through the woods to a clearing where they sat on a fallen tree. The light was flooding through, covering everything. The master placed a stone in her one hand and a small flower in the other, and said, “Feel their warmth. See how both are covered differently with the same light. Now trace the light of each back to the sun.” 

The apprentice heard the one large thing speaking in the master’s voice, saw the one large thing shimmer in the master’s eyes, and even felt the same human hurt in the master’s soft silence. The light grew even stronger and the master said, “We are all just small stones and little flowers yearning for the sun. What you have seen under words, behind many eyes, and beneath all cries is the One Direction.”

I think the hidden superpower of our community, and truly any healthy community, is that we begin to see under all of each other’s words, and behind each other’s eyes, and within each other’s cries, the One Essence of All. The superpower of community is it reminds us that we are not alone, but we are part of something much bigger.

Without community our lives run the risk of becoming very small, closing us in, enabling our fears and worries to run rampant. Communities challenge us to become bigger than we are, they embrace us in our pain, they hold us accountable for our actions and, perhaps most importantly, they give us a place to belong, so that we do not feel so alone in this great, big universe.

I am grateful today, for you, my community.

Sending you love and light,

Kaye