People walk around sad because they don't know what to do with their future. You
have this minute right now. What are you doing with it? ...If you are filled with joy for
one minute, then you will know what to do with the next minute also. We are given
this minute, not tomorrow. Sadness is very much concerned with what I don't have,
and I really don't have tomorrow yet. The Truth is, I am always standing before
nothingness, because I am nonexistent yet for the next minute. I'm not here yet. Time
isn't there. The world isn't there. The world is here...right now!
I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my 'real' life again at last. That is what is strange — that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here ...
The phoebe sits on her nest Hour after hour, Day after day, Waiting for life to burst out From under her warmth. Can I weave a nest of silence, weave it of listening, listening, listening, Layer upon layer? But one must first become small, Nothing but a presence, Attentive as a nesting bird, Proffering no slightest wish Toward anything that might happen or be given, Only the warm, faithful waiting, contained in one’s smallness. Beyond the question, the silence. Before the answer, the silence.
How rare in our world to sit absolutely still for an hour, not thinking, not even feeling, simply being in the presence of great beauty! At first one notices the small things, the subtle changes as wind suddenly ruffles a small space in the water, the amber color of still water over sand, or the reflection of a single tree; but little by little, it is the whole unified scene that takes over. And it is the silence itself that unifies it. One slides down deep deep into contemplation. This is not ecstasy like the light on lavender petals. It is more like prayer. Beauty beyond our understanding and beyond our uniqueness as individuals. Presence that asks nothing of us except to be in its presence. And filled with that presence, we walk back into our separate lives.
