Come Alive
“Each
time I dive deeper into the wilderness I can feel that green fire
burning through me. I feel more alive in the grind of my bones, in
the thud of the blood, in the twitch of my nerves. Within me and
without, I can sense the intense aliveness of life, the sheer urge of
life to live.”
Vajragupta
(“The Return Journey,” Parabola, Fall, 2018, p. 57)
What, I wonder, makes you
feel alive in this way? What causes your eyes to open wide, and your
step to quicken? Sometimes we find ourselves plodding in circles like
mules in the molasses yoke. We grind through our days as though
nothing in the world could possibly create a green fire in us.
Speaking for myself, of course. I am a creature of routine. I get up
around the same time every day, go to bed, eat my meals, take myself
to the gym, walk the dog with the regularity of a Swiss time piece.
Truly, it can become a drudgery. What lights my fire is this—writing,
the art I attempt, and the friends with whom I am authentic and intimate.
Vajragupta's article in
Parabola magazine is about reentry from a wilderness journey—what
it feels like to be fully alive one day and back to the grind of
routine the next. “How,” he wonders, “to stay alive
in the hustle and hassle of the city...How to return home and not
slip straight back into that tough old skin?” That's the
challenge. Here's a reminder—Jesus went out into the wilderness to
rest and pray; Buddha went into the forest to meditate, but neither
of them stayed. They came back to minister to the people. They
brought back to everyday life the fresh air they had experienced in
the wilds. They learned in their solitary ventures into the
wilderness how to be open to Spirit's message, how to become clear
and purposeful—and then they came back and applied what they had
learned.
Thoreau famously wrote in
On Walden Pond, “I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life...I wanted to
live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...” He spent two
years in the woods doing just that, but then he came out and wrote a
book about his experience which is still a classic today. Doing what
we love, that which not only lights our fire but stokes the flames,
is essential to living a good life—but only if we then give back in
some way to others and to the greater good. In the words of Howard
Thurman: “Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because
what the world needs is people who have come alive.” I
hope today finds you wildly alive and well.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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