Deep People

On Meeting Someone Anew

“Come, oh highly favored one, and bring

the kisses back to the Rose of Sharon,

and the jubilant sound of birds

praising the extravagance of beingness!

I will wait with patience, for somewhere

in the world, even now, his bright

fingers are penetrating the east; I will cry

no more, for the light of the world comes speedily.”

         Brian Bennett (Waiting for the Sun)

“Show yourself

and I will swim to you.”

         Mark Nepo (The Book if Awakening)

         Do you ever think, when you meet someone for the first time, while you are going through the greeting routine, “Hi, how are you?” “I’m fine, and you?” that underneath all this cultural choreography is a human being that brings to this moment all that has come before in his life—birth, childhood, made and broken promises, heartaches, riches, loves and losses?  We are all a rich broth of experiences wrapped up in skin.  We come to each moment conditioned by every circumstance that has come before, and when we surface near each other, we see only the crest of a wave that had its beginning in the deep ocean.  

         Sometimes we take the crest of the wave to be the totality of the ocean.  We draw first impressions based on its strength and beauty, on whether it has a perfect curl, on its height and endurance.  What we may miss is the tremendous power of its forward motion and all that is contained within it.  How often do we take the time to look into the eyes, to probe the depths and to appreciate not just the exterior beauty but the inner grandeur of another person? 

Take my friend, Brian, who wrote the poem above.  He is a tall, imposing man, but shy and soft spoken.  He chooses his words carefully and rarely makes small talk.  He looks away from you when he speaks and his hands tremble.  If you saw him out in public, if you judged him by his surface, you would not move toward him.  Yet, hearing his poetry read aloud is like falling into a pool of warm water.  He writes of loneliness, clandestine meetings, rainy nights, birdsong, and waiting for light to break through the darkness.  He writes and lives from his heart and from his experience.  He is a deep ocean.

Everyone we meet and especially those we think we know well, has a story that took years to write, a story that we do not know.  They are not our first impressions, nor are they the accumulation of our expectations, nor are they only as they seem.  Whoever they may be, it is grace to swim for a while in their ocean.

                          In the spirit,

                          Jane