Last November while I was on the West Coast, I walked to the beach one morning. It was a Fall morning of exquisite beauty. So pink the light, so glowing the sand, so utterly awesome. Still, it wasn’t only beauty that began to envelope me, it was a kind of sadness that I could nearly touch in everything around me. Like the sun was saying a mournful goodbye, lingering lovingly, knowing it had to go. Don’t we all do this? Linger lovingly with things we know have reached their limit, their lifespan. Death is natural and yet, it is still sad.
In that sadness of light I walked. Tears flowed. I contemplated what had to go. What in my life was reaching its natural limit, its time finished. How could I put it to rest? All around me as I walked things I can only call angels and mermaids began to appear in the sand. Magical, random collections of stones, shells and sand. The particulate matter of my own knowing. The power of the possible.
Where I come from, sadness is not a bad thing. It is the thing that draws you to yourself, to what is real, even to your joy. This kind of paradox, the embrace of sadness and joy lies at the heart of all medicine, all healing, whether you call it Chinese medicine, Western medicine or whatnot. Without one, the other cannot come into being, cannot be seen or experienced. Sickness comes, I would say, from holding one over the other, preferring one over the other. And all healing comes from the embrace of both one’s own knowing and the power of possibility.
Every Fall, the light begins to lean in and acquire some kind of strong yet subtle capacity to make me lie down on the ground. It is as though gravity has increased. So, I lie down on the sand, feeling both the warmth of the sun and the cool sand, quite recently wet and strangely or not so strangely, I feel immediately calm, shifted into some extra slow, yet extra real space, as though I have been meditating for several hours, relaxed, open and yet broken-hearted. Tears continue to flow. Allowing sadness is hard to do. Allowing an unspeakable joy to be present with the sadness is even harder. Especially if I think about it, which is also hard not to do. It has been a hard year, and it has been a fruitful year.
Last week, I walked through a cloud of smoke into a week of retreat, a week of no phone service, no internet and no control over the schedule since it was a group retreat. As I walked through the smoke, reveling in the spicy juniper, I contemplated the things I did not want to bring into the winter with me as well as the things I wished for the winter season to nurture, to incubate. Many of them were the same things that I knew at the beach in November to be ready for burial. These were gratefully and gently offered to the fire and smoke, dissolving and releasing to the sky and earth their essence.
And now, I am incubating. Hosting myself in the cold and the quiet season, hoping to find the time to honor the not-knowing of what is to come. During this week of retreat, it snowed, a blessing I miss living in the south these days. Two things always bring me great joy; the sea and snow. There is nothing more quiet than snow. Except maybe the laughter of children running in the halls or the tears of joy running in the shrine room.
Here’s to your own quiet, your own joy and sadness as you tend to life this Winter.
May the many angels of your own knowing appear here and everywhere this year!
P.S. Karme-Choling is where you can see the snow that looks like sand and go on retreat in the far north.