I commented several months ago to a friend that I was having trouble reaching a place of acceptance with what was occurring in my life. At the time, I didn’t have good words to explain what I meant, or why it was so distressing.

For this reason, I am grateful to come across others who are able to articulate the importance of acceptance, and are able to describe how it does not mean compliance, or submission. It is not giving in, or giving up. It is an opening to the Now moment… it means letting things go, and letting go of the need to want to help, control, and fix everyone and everything around oneself. It means accepting that things are already OK just as they are.

It also brings with it a great healing power, because we tend to invest so much energy in projecting what we want to see onto the world around us. As we also put a lot of energy into running away or hiding from things that hurt us.

Today, I listened to one of the many Dharma talks available at DharmaStream.org… and this one was a teaching on “Acceptance, Letting Go, Being Enough”. It is over an hour long, but luckily for me, that is about the time of my commute on the train - so I am very grateful I took the time to listen to the whole teaching…

And I am especially grateful because at the end, Adrianne recited a poem by Mary Oliver, entitled “In Blackwater Woods”:

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

I will likely come back to the notion of synchronicity from time to time. I recently heard someone say that coincidence is anything but an accident, indeed it is when two things come together perfectly, like two pieces of the same puzzle.

So with that in mind… a friend asked me a question that had me looking for information on Emerson, as in Ralph Waldo… and one of the first pages I came upon was this Service by Rev. Elizabeth A. Lerner for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring Maryland, titled “Gratitude for the Come-From-Behind Horse“.

The whole service is very worthwhile reading, but I really wanted to share here the last bit…

In such wondrous forms, life grows and fills this world, seas and sky with loveliness, scent, activity and richness that inspire us and our neighbors. Some of us hold power now, or will hold power one day and then it will be to us to honor all the good in the world with our own actions and forbearance and generosity. Therefore, let us seek out and recognize and remember the surprise and profundity of our own revelatory, inspiring moments. Be they a cloudy day or night, or the miraculous achievements of a come-from-behind-horses, earthily and every day, mundane and marvelous, creation tells us: this is not all there is, you are not all you will be, there is more for all of us, dark is succeeded by light, death by life. As we honor the lessons of generations, the world slowly, unevenly, slipping at times, regaining its footing, becomes better. Believe not in the odds of fear and misgiving. Cast your lot with the miracles and hope that is all around us, awaiting only our eyes and ears and touch and faith.

I awoke in the middle of the night last night, running over and over the same thoughts in my mind about a current situation. My inner dialogue sounded like a broken record. I just keep wanting to turn back the hands of time, or hit the hurry-up button… but both are clear signs I am even now still struggling to accept the here and now.

So after some time feeling like I was spinning my wheels, and sinking deeper into the mud of the ego-mind… I wondered if looking around my life through the lens of gratitude might not help. Then, I recalled this bit from the Way of the Circle:

“When you arise each morning, give thanks to the Creator, to the four sacred directions, to Mother Earth and Father Sky and all your relations.

Remember that all things are connected.”

In my sleepiness, I began to consider “all my relations”, all those that came before me… all the life force and energy that has transpired, and in effect, brought about this life I think of as my own. I thought about all of the circumstances and coincidences, the illnesses, the victories and defeats that took place generation after generation for as far back as we can humanly imagine.

Then I began to think of all that sustains me even now. Friends new and old. Work. A warm bed in which to rest at night. Food.

I thought for a while about how it *is* all connected. About how this is not just a catchy phrase, but about how when I am in my bed, I am one with it. About how when I am openly with another, I am one with that experience.

Little by little, as I considered all that has brought me to this moment in time, and all that sustains my life now, the frustration and anxiety I was feeling eased. Rather than a quick academic snap into the Now moment, I walked a slow path, paved with stones of compassion and gratitude towards those that have given and lived before and around me.

No matter how I arrive, I gain the same benefits from awareness of and acceptance of the Now, of that which is. I stop fighting my reality. I stop wanting to control it. Being is lighter than becoming. More spacious.

I find that I am far more able to appreciate the gifts all around me.

No longer do I want to turn back the hands of time, or hit the hurry-up button. Things really are just right - how can they be any other way? How can I get to any other point in my life without first walking through this moment? And in walking through this moment, why would I not want to breathe in deeply, breathing in the world around me, and then letting go just as easily as I take it all in?

Near where I live is a substantial river. I visit it often, and at this time of year, when everything around it is frozen and still, it is a beautiful sight to see the power at work in the river, as it flows through the harshest of cold air, and moves the water from source to destination (which eventually arrives back at the source :)

When times are difficult, I find myself remembering that river is not the water.

If I were to desire the water rather than be open to the beauty of the river… and if I were to try to stop up the river so as to cling to and hold the water near, the river would die, as would everything that depends on it downstream.

~~~

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”

~ Albert Einstein

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