Eye of the heart

The wind has dropped and there are bees fumbling in the lavender spires, geckos dozing on sun-warmed stones, a heady fragrance of sweet lavender and bruised rosemary where the dogs have pushed under the bushes. I love mornings like this. Everything inside me goes quiet and receptive, the noise stops, the clutter falls away. I am in Presence, something I cannot define or even begin to understand, a Presence both immanent and transcendent, and my world fills with visible and unseen light. I gaze on all that surrounds me with the eye of the heart.

Leap and the net will appear. One of my favourite food writers/bloggers has made the leap to become a published writer. Although it is limiting to call her a food writer, since she makes it clear that to write about food is to write about love, nurture, life. And the journey is what matters.

Now, do you know what I wish I could do? I wish I could go back to that night, slip into that room with the girl sitting in that chair, and wrap her up in a big hug. Trust me, I’d say. Trust me. It won’t always feel this way. And she’d know I was right.

My beloved housemate is feeling much better and I am grateful for that. I have managed to let go, just a little, of the oppressive helplessness I feel about my alcoholic brother, whom I remember best as the small red-headed boy who used to follow me around the house trying to show me how his toy train engine worked. I will always be his Big Sister and that is precisely the role I cannot play right now. Getting sober is such a simple thing. But not all of us are ready. I could never have sobered up for anyone else, and my brother will not sober up for the little daughters he has not seen in two years. He has to see for himself that his one precious life is sliding away out of sight and understand for himself what must be done. I read with gratitude the raw honesty of Syd talking about what happened and just let go an hour at a time.

We can’t help those who don’t want to help themselves. I have no idea why something so simple should escape  my conscious thinking so often. It reminds me of the way I wake up some mornings with a start, wondering how I am going to deal with situations that lie far ahead in the future, six months or seven years away. What will I do if I need another retinal operation next year? What will we do when Afghanistan comes to America? What will I do when peak oil runs out? What will I do if my brother doesn’t get sober by 2012 when the world is due to end according to the Mayan calendar?

Meanwhile the bees are thrumming in the blue lavender spires and the lizards bask on flat stones in the sun, and today is more than enough, the present moment is more than enough …  and all I really have to do is stay sober today and I might have a future tomorrow.

 

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