‘The Bend In The Water’
Time and tide move slowly at the mangrove-lined creek; there is an almost imperceptible sense of being connected to the motion of all things, as I stand at the water’s edge and when my mind is as still as my surrounds. Listen, watch, for it is there….
Yesterday I went to the funeral I mentioned in my previous post ,and it got me thinking. Not about death(although that would be the ultimate hiatus!),but about taking a pause in life’s endeavours.It could be voluntary or thrust upon us.
I was speaking to an old friend at the funeral I had not seen for many years and he was in hiatus mode,and waiting for his next work/vocational opportunity.Waiting around can be hard , sometimes even harder than being in the middle of some major work or relationship ,which demands constant action but has the comfort of the known. As we wait, anxiety and boredom may creep in, self-doubt also.Those emotions and behaviours in themselves can give us learnings.
On the positive side,there is the opportunity to refresh and recalibrate.Taking a break from the known gives new perspective on what it is we do,the hows and the whys of those things.Modern life is not particularly geared to reflection,and it not often seen as a virtue.It is non – linear thinking and it is hard to show proof of its utilitarian worth.
And,as nature apprently abhors a vacuum,a hiatus is not nothing. It will fill itself with new inspiration and wonders ;the universe will pour in if we allow it.
My second son took a hiatus in study last year ,and worked a couple of jobs.He simply wasn’t ready for university study.That used to be called a’ gap’ year – like something you fall down. Maybe you never climb back out…. I have heard it called a ‘bridge’ year now and I think I like that better,the idea of travelling over the unknown to the other side,whatever that is.The universe is preparing us for the whatever next,often without us being conscious of it.
The photo above depicts low cloud hanging almost to ground level on a volcanic plateau.The wind has died away. Still,and just a bit eerie.That cloud actually obscures a spectacular,picturesque mountain.It’s there,it’s just not visible to you now.After the hiatus,when the winds pick up and disperse the cloud, the mountain ,the next thing ,will hopefully be clear.
“You must stop seeing God as separate from you, and you as separate from each other. Nothing exists in the universe that is separate from anything else.Everything is intrinsically connected, irrevocably interdependent, interactive, interwoven into the fabric of all life”
– from ‘Conversations With God’, Neale Donald Walsch
I took this picture at the airport waiting for a flight home from holiday. Near me was an old friend that I do not see often but there is a connectedness when we do .She has given inspiration to me at times I needed it. It was a ‘coincidence’ that we were vacationing in the same place at the same time, and then again that we were on the same flight . There was rain around ,and then a stunning double rainbow appeared. There was a sadness in my friend when she talked and a tear in her eye, as the skies wept rain and spread colours around. Not a lot I could say in comfort ,only to share in those feelings of hurt, but it was a little ‘God’ moment when the universe appeared smaller, just sitting there ,connected at a confluence of human paths and nature.
Ebb Then Flood 