On my late afternoon walk tonight, our pond caught my attention.
This pond is a swampy kind of pond, and in some years we don’t even have a pond in winter. In those years, the pond just spontaneously appears with the fullness of the spring rains. Then it is called a vernal pond, and it is home to a large variety of toads and frogs and birds and dragonflies.
In the winter, all of this life is absent or dormant, and my interest in the pond lies in the fascinating variety of shapes and textures in the ice. It is like nature’s sculpture garden.
There are turbulent bits that are all churned up, and there are calm bits, where the surface of the pond is so smooth that you might be able to ice skate on it, although I have never tried.
And then there are things that have fallen into it, and stuff sticking out of the middle of it, in unexpected and unplanned places.
There are pathways that are never there in other seasons. It would be possible to go deep into the woods by walking over the frozen surface of the pond in winter.
It occurs to me that in many ways, this pond is like our lives. There are calm bits, where life is going along smoothly, and sometimes we are lulled into the complacency of expecting life to be like this, always.
And then, some turbulence comes in, which seemingly causes disruption in the flow, or, at least, in the expected flow, of our lives.
We run into apparent obstacles and stuff in our lives that we don’t plan and don’t expect.
And then, sometimes, there are pathways through all of it that are just as unexpected, perhaps where we are graced with ways through challenges that we could have never have anticipated.
This pond is really a lot like our lives.
It is like our lives in one other way, too. All of the churned up bits are on the surface of this pond. There is also a deep part of the pond that isn’t visible, where everything is still and calm, and where there is a base of the pond that is grounded and solid.
Just like the pond, we have a deep part of us that is below whatever is happening on the surface of ourselves or our lives. This part is grounded and calm. And it is always accessible to us, whenever we need it. It is there for us, no matter might be happening on the surface.
How can you access your inner core, that place of calm and groundedness?
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