I walked that early morning path of stillness and embraced that felt comfort of expansive solitude, the moist air, and wind-inspired whispering trees. Looking left and right, what should I see, but two shadows there beside me. Walking in lock step. How could this be, how could this be? It just isn’t natural. It just ain’t right. All in all, it gave me quite a fright. My thoughts do not define me, they are not my own, but I certainly knew it was time to stop reading so much Dr. Seuss. I’ve begun thinking in rhymes. It seems about time. But what is this aversion to this moment, and do I really need to move on, or can I embrace it? Can I let it be? I reached out to my new silent friends, one arm stretched toward the Sun and the other toward the Moon, my feet planted toward the Earth. I can’t explain, I can’t explain, but I felt roots wanting to grow as the light energy grew within me.
That Mother Earth connection, interconnection, there I was with the Sun and there I was with the Moon. Not separate, not apart. The flow in this beating heart and veins continued to grow stronger (and has ever since). Light converging from my left, soft glow; and, from the right, ever brighter and warm. And now, from down below. That dark place of rock and soil often forgotten, closed off through the doing structures I’ve helped build, but full of life often unrecognized. The energies converge, breaking apart that which can never be put back together. Words not there and still yet to come to describe this posture of outstretched arms, one to the left and one to the right, feet unable to move. Partner to each side that I love. Forgive me for forgetting, forgive me for forgetting, the connection that has come back to this body cosmos. How was it ever possible to forget this love? The unknown long-term impacts of this moment, something to embrace in myself and still always developing. Don’t cling, don’t grasp, just let it be and embrace it.
Something else has happened here inside, though, something more profound. Always there but rarely recognized in its physical and non-physical form and sometimes seen only quickly before being pushed away through thought and action. These patterns of singularity and of separateness—designed and inevitable—developed through so many years of ancestral, cultural, and societal effort and built over unmeasurable time. The brain and time, however, could not withstand this convergence of Earth, Sun and Moon. A flash of eternity. Once broken wide open, watched and nurtured, it can never be the same. How could it be? Dr. Seuss was one bright dude. Lead with your heart, your one true mind, and everything will open up. Scary but glowing. How arrogant, the doubt will say, that we would consider ourselves something more than this one body, this one person. That it’s possible that we, the Earth, Sun and Moon, are a continuum—and that they are all inside us. Pretty heady country for the plains of the mind to comprehend. But it’s true, right there, in your hand, a drop of blood, the start of the cosmos. A systemic organism that is so interrelated that we ignore it at our own cellular peril. Wonderful and concerning all at once, but never ending joy in the thought. Lesson learned. I need to read more Dr. Seuss. I truly do. Everything is within reach when one leads with heart.
—Keith Knapp, friend of Prairiewoods