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Hence, in the Silence, it is important to refrain from putting forth too much effort. Surrender to the Hidden Springs is the priority, not trying to work yourself back or forward to unbecome or become anything.
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I wrote the following reflection, April 19, 2018. I offer it has an invitation to you, to reflect on who and what you are. How are you a marvelously unique manifestation of the one Life?
I have had persons tell me I am different, you know, in that kind of serious, mystified-look way. Two examples... A former mother-in-law told me so angrily ~ I think she wanted her daughter to have married a normal man, but I do not know what normal would have been to her ~ apparently, I was not her kind of normal. One other, my Lieutenant, when I served in a jail system as Chaplain, said, looking intently, "You are different." I looked at him intently, back. He broke the silence, noticeably uncomfortable, "Oh, I don't mean that in a bad way." I smiled, comfortably. Yet, no one has ever given me a description of that, like "How am I different?", "Who decides anyone is different from others?", "Is there a norm out there somewhere?", "Does being different mean some of us are different and some not?", "But, then, if others are different from others, then are not both groups different?" I, regardless, celebrate being seen as different. I do not want to die having simply fit into some idea of normal.
I saw two young men yesterday, here where I live, as they just came from kayaking off the river. I asked about how their trip up-river was for them. They gladly shared. I relished the moments. They looked much different than I was used to, very different, but that was okay. Later, I reflected, seeing how they would have been judged as abnormal, weird, even sinful likely, by people from my childhood. They would have been seen as wrong, not right, outsiders, not insiders. Yet, thankfully, the Beloved challenged this socialization in me through the years, and, now, to feel the joy of seeing the humanness in the amazing tapestry of diversity that makes up humankind, to see this in animals, to embrace it within myself ~ what joy! what sense of Love!
I celebrate I am different, I like being a purple tree. And, yes, many have not liked my being a purple tree; they missed the blessing. Some of them hurt me deeply, but the pain they chose to inflict opened my heart more to Life and the inner beauty within myself, within others, even within them.
I have come to know we need not try to be ourselves, we already are that we are. We see it, we celebrate it, we live it, we do not try to be it. We are each a unique expression of the one Beloved, a ray of the one Light, even as is each leaf, each wave, each rock, each brush of wind against your face, each sunset. Could it be, truly, we are each a purple tree?
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(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2020
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