Spring keeps blossoming as the world goes crazier, life gets more intense and challenging

for almost everyone I know and I explore finding balance between deepening connectings-with-others and my ever strong need for time-just-with-self.

The intense humming of bees still fills the valley all day. On this property, they’ve moved on from the orange blossoms that have now transformed into tiny green beginnings of oranges. Instead, they mass inside the flowered tangles of the honeysuckle vines and weave their vibrating selves through the olive tree’s tiny blossoms.

There seem to be more birds here this spring than ever before in my eleven and a half years on this land. Just this week I noticed some new bird songs. A local mockingbird has recently taken up residence in my garden, singing endless themes and variations all day long and into the evenings. Then, at the feeders, I caught sight of some big black-hooded birds with tan breasts that I’d never seen before. A bird-watching client soon identified these black-hooded grosbeaks for me. Now I can discern their robin-like chirping.

The rose garden is full of blowsy roses spilling over, blanketing the earth in petals. I’ve cleared out the spent, gone-to-flower bok choy, chard and mustard greens in the vegetable garden, putting in some new baby plants to replace them. The strawberries are coming ripe in great bunches now: such joy to eat a sun warmed berry right from the bush! All this is quite a wonder to the little girl in me who grew up amidst bricks and concrete, with no idea of how the vegetables got to the grocery store! 

Despite all the incredible peace and gentleness that pervade this sweet Eden, it seems unquestionable these days that something enormous and intense is happening on an astrological, planetary, cosmic level. The world-at-large continues to be going crazier and crazier. Violence, aggression, disruption and devastation escalate daily in what seem more and more to be the proportions of Armageddon.

In the nearer-to-hand world of people I know closely and the people with whom each of us work, something of considerable proportions is also afoot. In this closer circle there’s a continuing, noticeable and significant increase in the level and number of major changes and challenges being faced in almost everyone’s lives. Some of these challenges have to do with life threatening illnesses, but more often the changes/challenges seem to be about everyone being nudged or pushed toward letting go at deeper levels than ever before.

The lettings go seem to about life-scripts, long cherished belief systems, expectations, and familiar ideas of self. The direction seems always toward opening and expanding. The work seems always intense and challenging.

With all that is going on in the dear people in my small world, I am working more hours than usual, even some hours on the Monday of my non-scheduled week.  And, I’m spending much more time than is typical on the phone with my dearest friends. My own challenge these days has to do with finding ways to stay balanced in my self-care in the middle of discovering how very much more connected I have become with the people I care about. 

Two weeks ago, feeling somewhat exhausted and over stretched with all this contact, I decided to take an impromptu 5-day “time-out ”rather than trying to plan a full-on retreat time. With how connected I was feeling to the imminent shifts in two friends’ lives, unplugging completely wasn’t really feeling like an option. This was a very new experience for me!

Yet, putting down my end of the “staying tuned” while remaining available for phone call/email updates initiated by these friends seemed a halfway measure that might help me regroup.  In fact, it helped enormously. I sort of put my prayers for everyone on “auto-pilot” then folded quietly and completely into the energy of just my own life. Time expands enormously in this space. I feel so deeply nourished by the spaciousness of the inner and outer silence. I do nothing particularly “special” in this space, but everything that I do seems to become more particular and special as I do it in this space. (Even when what comes up to do is deep-scrubbing either the layers of wax off the kitchen tile or the scale hidden under the rim of the toilet!)

I noticed, as I did pick up the phone for the more or less one-a-day calls, how that spaciousness in me was changed. I came immediately from my self-space into being present in the connection. But, at the end of each call, it would take quite a while for me to settle back into the quiet self-space, to let go of thinking about what my friends and I had spoken about. There was no resentment or upset about this. It was a gift, an opportunity to see, in a stripped down, totally exposed way, how moving into and out of connection with other happens in me.   I was being able to see something that, in the context of lots of ongoing contact, is ordinarily quite invisible to me.

Then the night I ended the “time-out” I made several calls to “plug back in.” None were for very long, even one with a client. Still, as I went to bed that night my body felt really wired, zinging with energy overload. I found it almost impossible to slow myself down, to shed the excess energy and find my way to sleep. After a long while, I remembered that floating, sitting or standing in water always helps me shed this kind of agitation. I went to the hot tub and finally fell asleep floating  there on my air mattress.

I don’t seem to feel any need to make anything of or doing anything with this vividly new awareness. I’m just paying attention. And, I’m noticing that I do feel some draw to be taking little “time outs” more frequently as I continue this deepening of my connections with and availability to the wonderful friends and clients I have in my life. 

Originally published May 2002