ramble on

so the blogger at triangle nose posted the simon and garfunkel video to slip sliding away. she's so cool, because below the video, she posted the line, "you know the nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away." and that has stuck with me since i read it yesterday. kind of a challenging of that sense of control...the more you think you have it, the more the universe will pull you back to the reality that you don't have it. i mean, i think that's a strange statement in the sense that yes, there are things you are in control of. like...you. and only you. and really, only certain aspects of you, at that. and then there are those times we think we're controlling our lives, but actually, it is someone else and their impact on our lives we are trying to control which is, you guessed it, someone else and not a small aspect of you that you actually have control over. i have been turning that line around in my mind off and on for awhile.

then...i am attending a book club tonight. i've been invited for a number of months, but am finally going to remember to go and make the effort to be there tonight. the book we're reading is the secret life of bees, by sue monk kidd. i think i have lent my copy of it out, so i haven't actually read it...this month...or even this year. i read it a few years ago. and i am not remembering it very well. i vaguely remember the story line...online synopses have helped jog my memory a bit this morning...yes, i am cheating for my book club. i am already a book club failure...ha but i found this little passage today....

"You know, some things don't matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart--now, that matters. The whole problem with people is--"

"They don't know what matters and what doesn't," I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.

"I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters" (147).

i had a post i never posted the other day that started with talking about the hiking i did when my kids had their outdoor climbing trip last week. how i had forgotten how you can follow a path when you're hiking, be trucking along, and then all of a sudden, that path stops. and i'm usually pretty focused on helping a little one on the path, so it's always kind of disorienting to me to lose the path or find that a path has ended. like, "huh? where the hell did the path go?" then i have to look around...usually behind me ("yeah, there's the path i was following, i'm not making this shit up"), then around me ("yeah, there were others on the path and they seem a little confused, too...except for that guy over there...why doesn't he look confused?..."), and then start picking out a "do-able" route to the next path i can find. (yes, i am almost always this conscious of things...it annoys me too, so get over it.)

and that's been kind of how life has been lately. i was trucking along at a good pace, feeling confident in the path and my ability to make it, and then all of a freaking sudden, that path disappeared. whoa. (i know, i know...it was hardly even noticeable, right?) well, it was hardly tolerable at times, but i think i've found another path. i have no clue where it goes, but i have faith in a greater power, an infinite good, an ancient wisdom...a collective consciousness...yeah, it's God...feminine and masculine, understood, beyond understanding. i was talking to a friend who studies a lot of buddhism the other day. i was telling him how the masculine pronouns in the bible irked me. you know...the whole perpetuation of patriarchy in christianity. so he started telling me how for something to be, there must first be a space for it to exist in. we were comparing it to breathing...how your lungs expand (or the diaphragm expands them...this isn't biology), creating a vacuum that draws in the air. so he was saying that if God was masculine, the space God came into, fills, exists in was feminine. to which i responded that the universe is the feminine uterus God exists in?!? and he said right!!! i don't know. it was a fun discussion...even if it was the blind leading the blind. :)

so anyway...doubt and misery and anger and resentment have come in and cleared out a path, i suppose. although i don't really want to be on a path created by those things.... maybe they came in and cleared out all those silly notions that i am the most important or that i am in control. and now i can hear the things i need to hear. now i can feel the pull toward what i call my true north. it's always been a very strong pull....in a direction i do not always understand because i am not always consciously choosing it...other than i am choosing to follow the pull. i don't know. hard to explain in words. but so much more natural than the last month...although i suppose that was natural, too. in a painful, uncomfortable way. there are still things i need to do. and i am sure i will get them done when i am ready. i'm on a path again, see...so i can see a little ways ahead of me. ;)

ramble off
peace