Here and There …

The speed and ease of modern travel is quite a thing … how quickly we can get from there to here.

Distances that used to take weeks, months, years, lifetimes to traverse – can now be crossed in mere hours.

And yet the soul, the psyche, this inner heart, has it’s own speed and it isn’t that of this modern world of ours. And so, it’s taking me time. Time to re-orient, to transition, transport, trasmute, translate, transpose … from there to here.

I have grabbed onto a handful of stories from our time and repeated them to those who so lovingly ask. Meanwhile, the snowglobe was shook up while we were there, and now, each snowflake, a moment, an interaction, a tiny experience, is slowly settling down into my being here.

And then … there’s been this thing.

This awareness within me of an internal ladder, a yardstick, the instinct to label, to rank things on some sort of invisible hierarchy as good, bad, better, more or less (insert any moral value here) …

So I’ve been quietly wondering …

Can I allow it (the trip, the experience … me, you, life) to be what it is, as it is, without it needing to hold it up against anything, to not need to be better or worse than anything else?

Can I hear stories of how many shoes are being stolen at our local store here, and not jump into a story of how much better, safer it is there?

Can I pay for groceries and not tell a story about how much better, more connected, it was to buy food there?

Can I sit in this quiet, surrounded by so much silence and very few people and not mind wander into a place where it was more enjoyable, more connected, more communal there amidst all the people?

Can I tell stories of connection and moments of aliveness, without comparing them to what it’s like here?

Can I release all of those stories, notice the differences, and then let it all be what it is? As it is?

I read that one of the most critical parts of any journey is the return home. That the journey asks, for us to gather up the medicine that we found along our way, and bring it back … not just for ourselves, but to our home, our community.

And so I sit with this … what is the medicine I can bring, without needing things here to be different? Without needing to hold them up to a hierarchy …? Without, the greater-than/less-than deception?

I feel like we swim in a world that holds things up against one another all the time. That there is an assumed clear right and wrong, better or best — Even in my fridge!

It’s better to take the train than an internal flight, to use a glass bottle than plastic, to dress based on cultural standards than not, to read instead of watch TV, to live and be close to nature than in a city center. A better way to parent, to live, to work, to breathe. To say or not to say, wear or not to wear, stay or go, say yes or no, do or not do, be or not be, have tos and shoulds and if you don’ts … and on and on and on …

And I wonder … aren’t all of these internalized stories, rules, even those that maybe even seem like they’d be logical to adhere to – in service of fear and scarcity, “a fear that demands a loyalty from you,” as Cole Arthur Riley says.

Can I live in the gray, in the space between right and wrong, good and bad, better and best – which means be present and open to what is?

Can I dance in the paradox … that something can be better except when it isn’t and worse except when it’s not?

Can we, which means I, move toward what our bodies desire, can we follow the inner yes, can we open up the possibilities of life, stretch the box larger and larger and larger, make it so big that there is only wide open space … enough room to hold it all? And if not, can we put a lid on that damn box so now it’s a triangle?

Can love and abundance be the path?

A love that isn’t bypassing or ignoring what is… a love that recognizes grief, pain, the suffering, the hard.

I read a book where the author, Elaine Aron noted that we sweet humans, in all our layers of learning and living have learned to interact by either ranking or linking. Ranking, which is centered around comparison, competition and power and linking which comes from a place of inter-connection and love.

Is it any wonder, in a world that grades us from the very start, that assigns a letter or number or percentile to our doing, that we internalize ranking, even of our being-ness?

There’s a seemingly invisible, now made visible ranking script that dictates so much of what I choose, we choose, which means, this script also runs when I’m with you … thinking there’s a right, wrong, better, best, greater than/less than.

Because choosing the better, the right, and judging others by the same ladder, so often assumes being safe, being good, being okay, belonging, arriving – it has us looking outwards, instead of inwards.

So, I’m peeling back more layers – deeper and deeper … noticing and not condeming what arises, asking myself, which is to also ask you, where are you ranking and what might be possible if you link …

Link to myself just as I am, which is also to you, an invitation to open and receive it all, just as it is, with love?

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I was in town yesterday, wobbly, not used to this place that has been so familiar for a whole life, stumbling to interact in this now – new environment. I went into the floral shop to buy a bamboo plant, a connector from there to here.

Suddenly, my ears picked up on the background song …. “Country Roads, Take me Home, to the place, I belong …”

And I smiled.

The last time I heard that song, I was sitting cross-legged circled up in a classroom in Thailand, the heat of the afternoon causing sweat to roll down my back, while a bunch of Thai students and my own children together were excited to sing for us the song they all knew in English …

“Country roads, take me home, to the place, I belong …” They sang every word.

A moment that now lives in me.

How different those worlds, those “homes” seemingly feel to be … here and there.

And yet …

As I smiled deeply at the florist, wished her a beautiful day, I felt that maybe I don’t have to “do” anything, that the linking is naturally happening from there to here, moments impossible to rank, moments that in no way need to be any different than they are, moments, divine moments, that just like us, are inter-connected to life and love, linked moments that in this case, sing the medicine home.

Until Next Time.

N

“Can I say yes to the world the way it is? How do I show up in this moment, say yes and continue to stay open …?”

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer