Peace for the World

Last night I came home from the rainfall of falling rain in the forest in Ukiah.

My heart stops to think of it, both going and leaving, how there is perhaps too much transience in the difficulties of letting go.

I saw the red bark stripped from the madrones, such beautiful arching towards sky, her naked flesh, a smooth chestnut, a wishing bone, grace.

Learning to live into the promise of peace draws arrows from my tender quiver. Too timid to aim at anything but emptiness.

My heart, the quality you ask, is a tremendous drum pulled tightly right now, as if now waiting for familiar hands to call out the sound to release me.

I place my own at my chest, feel the beating before I've even centered myself.

Rain and storms, fog and dangerous roads, so much distance between me and my two halves of heart walking around outside of me.

Do you understand the majesty here?

One son is in a forest monastery practicing meditation and studying the Buddhist suttas while the other is in Oregon going to school, playing baseball, and meeting God in Bible study with his bros every day, one step closer to baptism.

This alone frees me from the constant defeat of distant smothering, knowing they are both looking for, and I suspect at times, meeting God for themselves.

Yesterday I thought, look God in the eye and see yourself. Not there or in the reflection of, just see yourself.

I too would like to climb a difficult hill in the middle of winter, day in and day out, to my cootie in the forest, simple home, wooden floor, and sleep on the ground in a bag I claim as one of my very few belongings.

Or to sit with friends and discuss the scriptures one line at a time, taking the sting out of loneliness so that there is only alone and with God.

And also, I find you. Going back to the busy, busy work of business and all the buzzing about feels like walking that hill in the woods with water in my boots.

I know how to say be grateful, be kind, serve others, how to turn a frown into a smile, how to choose what I have.

But what if giving up something you maybe never had to begin with? As if my children, these powerful, vibrant beings, were ever mine.

Still I call out in the night waiting for an echo, a single flash of light up against the blackest sky.

I bow in disbelief, the enormity of having had and witnessed, and now to watch from a side place, as their shoulders carry their own burdens, up and away toward what refuge they might realize.

God has saved me 10,000 times. 10,000 Buddhas and the One. Jesus, Yahweh, Allah, kindness, love.

I take my bowing home with me now. Anjali to my plants, to wet skies and stormy mornings, to friendship.

Here I can see God everywhere, your tender heart, your longing, the long stretch of silence between wishing for a thing and relief, the hallway.

I once heard when one door closes, God opens another, but man is it hell in the hallway.

The hallway I think rather is where I meet God, the maker, the making, the made.

When I am lost of all my great ideas and have surrendered my picking set, quiet,

Some will other than, no, another than mine, another us.

God bless.