Reflection

"We cannot see our reflection in running water.

It is only in still water that we can see."

Zen Saying

I spent a good part of my young adulthood too busy to be still. Even my spirituality was busy....full of meetings and people and services and good deeds. My quiet time was an item to be checked off of a mental list of things to do if all was to be well with my soul. This spiritually active chapter of my life was written during the years that my children were young. So there was movement. And business galore. In those days, when there was unrest in the deeper waters of my soul, I admit to spending lots of energy trying to gloss it over and appear calm. Never a thought was given to retreat. To rest. To stillness.

Flashback to my childhood. I was a loner. Often a lonely one. Acutely aware of how I somehow wasn't like the others. I grew to equate being alone with not being liked...and, as adolescence waved her magic wand, to not liking myself. So, when my first spiritual awakening included acceptance and warmth and validation from a group of actual people, I thought I'd found heaven on earth! I grew to believe I was loved....but the path to self acceptance and self love was a longer, quieter path.

This place, this lovely pond, is where I celebrate me. In the stillness of this place I am alone. Yet never lonely. It has taken years...and the wonderful work that is a thirty year marriage. And the gift of two exceptional children. And the strength of the truest of friends. And some therapy. And, I suppose, just life as I grow a bit older...it's taken a lot to bring me to this point of spiritual surrender. To this place in my life, both physically and metaphorically, where I can be wholly still. And genuinely enjoy a crystal clear reflection of me.

Joining friends for

Little Things Thursday

and

Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop