During quarantine I have watched out my window at winter turn into the bright green of spring, and then that velvet green turn into something lush and leafy, with all the heat that counters the breeziness of the previous season. In recent days I have watched leaves start to one by one twirl down from the tops of trees, heading toward fall. In a way it feels like a slow or fast motion movie, depending on the day and how you feel.
But this week for me it feels special, because I have also reached a 5-year mark of learning and growth present in my rainbow baby, my youngest and long-sought child. She was born just as my greatest mentor died, and now we are five years on, and so much water under that proverbial bridge. So much. Yet these five months have felt like a learning of five years in some ways. Putting both time frames side by side I see parallels and suddenly my mind opens up like a lotus or some slow but sure opening flower, bent toward the sun. I see a long process of learning from suffering that has come to fruition in patience, fortitude, and perhaps most important for me now, forebearance.
A waiting, a holding back but paying close attention to the way someone talks about himself, or the concerns she might have, or the prejudices another might hold...but being able to know in my core what's wrong, what's right, and being able to stand in the middle to see. Not to agree, but to see, to really see.
Now what I see is God's eye, and see as well this has been a lifelong trend in my life: encounter of this place of pain in the souls I have met. Right now this has opened up in ways that, for awhile, caused me deep and abiding pain. Now I acknowledge this pain, and see what it teaches me. I acknowledge the wrongs around me in foul ideas coming out of this pain or ignorance, and I acknowledge that if I look, I see God present, filling in those dark gaps with the good humankind can wreathe around what matters. I am understanding the space I take up better now because of this, and this means I can walk ahead into the path I've been given, regardless of where it goes. Regardless of the fact we will never be the same again.