Listen to this Wildspire Spark on the podcast:
I’m out for a walk, and it’s one of those days where everything looks perfect.
A blue jay is nestled on the branch of a bush, and he’s looking at me. I get closer, and he doesn’t move.
I want to take a picture. Can I get a little closer?
He still doesn’t move. I take a photo, and he’s looking right at me.
What a miracle!
One of my neighbors, a stocky guy I’ve seen before, says, “Did you see the duck?”
“You mean the ones in the pond?”
A pair of ducks have been hanging out in our pond for some weeks.
“Yeah. Last night, my dog startled the mama duck, and she’s sitting on about eight eggs.”
Keeping a respectful distance, the man points out where the duck is sitting on her nest. She’s quite exposed because the landscapers chopped back the trees and bushes. The man had put a folding table on its side in front of the nest, with a sign: Ducks – keep away.
How sweet of him to protect the duck and those unborn ducklings!
Another man rests against a tree, gazing into the water, a carton of hard cider beside him, and that’s beautiful, too.
Down the block, neighbors smile and wave. Their dogs greet each other, wagging their tails.
They’re all just loving one another.
The sky is so blue. The clouds, so delicate.
It’s all perfect.
There’s a rundown house, and beside the house number is a sign reading: BLESSED. The letter e in the sign is cockeyed, and something about that seems just right.
I’ve had moments like this before; I’ve said it feels like being in the Twilight Zone where everything is so beautiful it makes me want to cry.
Actually, I think I’m seeing the world as it is: beautiful, perfect and full of love. It’s how the world is when I’m not thinking about how it should be different.
My heart is full.
I know a man who is trying very hard not to feel bad. So he stays in his head where it’s comfortable most of the time, but also where he tortures himself, unknowingly.
With all my heart, I want him to join me here in this beautiful feeling.
I tell him about this good feeling in my body, speaking to him from that place.
Like a wave, I see it touch him. He pauses for just a moment before going back to the story in his head.
“Can you feel it?” I say.
“I can see that you feel it,” he says.
“But can you feel it in you?”
He goes into a story about how sometimes he feels that way.
“How about now?”
The answer is no. He can’t. He doesn’t. Not in this moment.
And it’s okay because it’s real. I like this better than pretending that he does feel it, and much better than if I were trying to make him.
We end our conversation and he ponders this question:
“Can I live ecstatically with simplicity and ease?”
I really like this question.
Living ecstatically.
“I know where living ecstatically comes from. I can point you in that direction. I don’t know what you’ll see, but if you look there, you’ll see something about it,” I tell him.
I think he hears this.
As I’m walking around this beautiful neighborhood in the setting sun, it doesn’t really matter. Whether he looks or doesn’t. Whether he sees it or not.
The world is a beautiful place.
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