As I look out from the lodge onto Keene Channel this morning, I can barely tell where the line is between water, forest and sky. I can barely tell where my own body leaves off, and this wild world begins. I'm writing this by hand. Later, when I load the skiff with laundry and head to town for supplies with my crew, I'll transfer these words to my computer and send it along your way. Consider this a letter, then. "Blog" is one of the least alluring words ever consigned to the English language, in my opinion.
I've just completed my first Inside Passages kayaking retreat of the season, with a terrific group of Courage & Renewal facilitators. My co-leaders on this trip have been John Fenner from the Center for Courage and Renewal, Noel Stout as assistant guide, and Emily White as lodge chef. What a great team.
For a week I haven't checked email. I haven't heard a stitch of news either, and yet I feel flush with the news that matters; that I am awash in a still-vibrant world, that there are good people all around doing extraordinary work. William Carlos Williams wrote, "Look at what passes for the news / You will not find it there."
So I have been busy this week listening to the news that issues from silence, from words carefully chosen, and from the ground beneath my feet. Sometimes it is delivered in human voices. Sometimes in the voice of raven, harbor porpoise, the wind in the spruce forest, or the sheets of rain pelting the water. There is a great deal to ponder here.
In her poem Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does it End?, Mary Oliver writes,
"There are things you can't reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the birds flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier."
It is a strange thing, how my stubborn conviction that the world is tragically flawed can suck the life out of me, and make this a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thought, in my experience, has a bad habit of going negative, almost by design, and it is not a habit that can be cured by more thought. On the contrary, I have been learning to question my thoughts ruthlessly, take them on as the snarky, unruly crowd that they are.
The best way to do that, I've found, is to let my thinking mind hammer away at its grievances, if it must, and in the meantime climb back down into my body, re-establish contact with the ground I stand on, or the flowing water beneath my kayak. That is what I have been doing all week during this retreat. My body knows what is needed, and what to do. Take the next step, or the next stroke of the paddle, but do it consciously. Feel myself doing it. Let go of the physical tension I hadn't noticed I was carrying. Soften my senses. Open back up. Listen deeply. The mysterious thing is that if I keep at this for awhile, if I stay with the sensations of my body in a direct, immediate way, sure enough the mind lets go of the bone it's been chewing on, and the world around me comes back into vibrant focus. The world that was alive all the while comes back alive in me. There it is again. Here I am again. Now, what does the world need from me?