Contemplations

In the grimy morass of our present dilemma, amid the dis-ease and wrenching separation, lies the buried treasure of our belonging: our deepest passion. “Hope,” says another poet (Jane Hirshfield), “is the hardest love we carry.”

There is an instinct within us in such times to gather together and rekindle the fires of meaning, vision, love, hope. Perhaps the holiest grace of Rolling Ridge is that it offers a sacred, wild space where these impulses of the human soul can flourish.

The reason it is tricky to summarize neatly the activities and ethos shared here is because our collective work is ongoing and ever-changing. Like a quilt, there is a patchwork of partner groups, retreat participants and neighbors who share a love for this place and who arrive over and over again with hearts and minds open to whatever there is to encounter.

Mist is a threshold phenomenon. Sometimes one crosses the threshold swiftly, trailing clouds of glory and falling into the waiting, loving hands of a new life.  More often, I suspect, one lingers, wondering, scanning the veiled horizon. 

The marvelous thing about this question is that it has a thousand answers if we are willing to stand in the center of the whirlwind, brave the terrifying wind and the piercing heartbreak, and listen to the roar.

This is the unfair dilemma in which we find ourselves: how to hold the miraculous belonging, to accept the precious, joyous gift of kinship and community, while absorbing the telltale signs of a deeply unwell world and the unpreventable suffering of those we love.

In the detritus of grief and decay, new tendrils of being and connection were growing…

We learn that we are part of vast ocean of being, “deep time,” to which we are knit with bonds of love and responsibility, and that knowing is like a fire…

I am humbled by the insurmountable troubles of our planet, by the heart-rending sorrows befalling friends and loved ones, and by the personal brokenness with which I am confronted. I am in a mood to sit in the mud awhile, to let the moist earth seep around me, to be low and grounded.

When we plunge sensationally and whole-heartedly into the world beyond four walls we release the forest from the fetters of scenery, from being a bothersome backdrop to self-absorption.