A pause in our path.

I surprised Erika on Tuesday.

I surprised myself even, driving 97 southbound on my way towards Annapolis, route 50, and eventually the Bay Bridge.  The hour and forty minute straight shot that follows once I'm over the Chesapeake Bay--route 50, Ocean Gateway--of Maryland's Eastern Shore, its farmland expanse that finally levels out at the Atlantic Ocean and the beach.

Instead of straight and eager to get home, without even thinking about it I found myself easing in to the exit lane off 97, same one I used to take when I was in high school and lived with Sean and my mom.  Less than three minutes from where I grew up there I stood, knocking at my writing partner's front door, sure she was home because the overhead light was on in the kitchen and a sippy cup was on the table.  Erika's hair was wet from the shower, her nose stuffed from a cold and still her signature bright-face and grin opened the door. 

It was a good visit.  We moonbounced with two of her kids and one of her nephews.  We shared lunch and breif conversation with her husband's parents.    And we shared the quiet, the skinny hungry quiet behind our shiny eyes.  That specific straggled desperation only a writer knows, the secret look that says I've been too long away from the words.

The soul has a funny way of talking, and for regular readers of this blog I dont need to say that it is soul speak I pay most close attention to.  A few weeks ago my spirit spoke with a language so palpable that it moved me and my heart the way music or the ocean flow does, a surge so strong and real I had to listen.  Why go, it said, when the sun is back again?  I called Erika before I even thought it all the way through--this automatic yes my heart had instantly sung.  And so it was Yes, we agreed, pushing back my departure for the road until August, and following the warmth and the sun west at the end of our high season here.  It only seemed to make good sense. 

Changes in my life are always accompanied by extra meditation and quiet-time.  It's a habit, built on years of practice.  I am a firm believer that readying my own well of wisdom and peace--that inner reserve--takes attentive commitment.  Like the Buddhists say, it is something which I must always Begin Again, to which I must be always willing to return.  To hear my soul speak requires the fine, mysterious alchemy of the present moment.  I have a choice, but that choice is minute.  It involves the business, merely, of showing up.  The readiness to be present .

And so thankfully, everything since my choice to stay has fallen easily in to place.

Everything, that is, except the words.  The words, I knew, would take some gentle easing of my self and my sensibilities.   Blog about that, Erika said on Monday when we were together.  I will, I told her.  But it is not me to credit for this idea, the idea of being where we are at, and how actually surrendering to our present position is the precise action necessary to catalyze the energy of change.   This is from the Taoists.  My old friend Charlotte, from Colchester Farm, is the one who used this metaphor:

Picture a stream gently flowing through the woods.  The water moves slowly and peacefully along, according to its own flow.  Eventually it encounters a fallen log.  Rather than fighting or rushing over it, the water pools.  It gains momentum in its state of non-action.  Eventually the water gathers so much a reservoir of itself that with no effort whatsoever it simply flows right over its obstacle.  It passes the log from the power it generated by merely staying still.

Making even a pause in our path or flow a sacred, mighty thing.