The Gift

Sometimes the universe wants to give you a gift.  Only it’s not free.  You might, for instance, just be driving along, looking at Queen Anne’s lace and soft green grass while sunlight pours through the glass and lightly illuminates the cat paw prints on the way into your car. Then you notice that there is some sort of dancing magic transforming inside of your dirty Subaru into something divine – the light is gently luminous on the half full plastic bottle of diet coke that is rolling around on the floor and it flashes off the broken mirror that your child left on the rubber mat.  The dust on the dash sparkles.  And suddenly “Rockin the Casbah” is a call to a holy war and the Clash are your priests.  Then you notice.  The universe is offering you a gift.  There is a way to see through all of the things that weigh you down.  There is a door open onto some glittering possibility….no not possibility…reality.  There is a truth that will open out into endless vistas, a way of seeing things that will not confine you.  All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.

But the gift isn’t free.  It requires everything you have.  It requires opening your hands and letting go of it all.  You must stop worrying about what other people think when dirty napkins flutter out of your car when you open the door. Stop worrying about your kids and how you will pay for college and whether they will suffer forever from that C in math. Stop worrying about whether your mortgage is too high, worrying about what will happen if you lose your job or what you will eat and whether you are too fat and whether people will notice your socks don’t match.  It requires you to forgo seeing other people as obstacles and trying to tell them what to do or how to conduct their paths from here to the other side. You have to let go of all of that to fit through the door.  And, of course, while you think about it, while you wonder if you could possibly….could you possibly….could you open your hand…the door swings shut again and you feel the weight of the dirty car – why haven’t you cleaned out this car- and the meetings you have to attend and whether your kids will get through college and whether you can pay the mortgage and whether or not you have any milk or cat food -cats will eat you, you know. And the world closes in around you…and it is heartbreaking but comforting at the same time.  There are walls and boundaries.  You are too small for the limitless lands. This weight is familiar if nothing else. It soothes the sense of loss.. But that moment…just that one view through the crack in the door.  Maybe that’s enough for now.  Maybe you can learn to let go just a little…just a little.  Maybe you will be ready when the door opens next time.