Let the little things explode...

This week a reader was telling me that some big things are coming up that will leave her at times unhappy and emotionally challenged. After sharing her difficulties, she asked, "What can I do for my soul and spirit?"

Reflecting on those seasons for myself, when life feels vacant, unhappy, when the big things seem in disarray, I go for the little things. Through them, light, largeness, spirit, and magic manage to arrive and I am served.

 Yet, I need to stop and look to see larger, even at the commonest object. Let's say this hand typing here. Taken for granted, it didn't even exist in my awareness until I just stopped to notice. Slowly, lifting it off the keyboard, I move it sideways, beginning to feel air, space, and then five fingers. The slower the motion, it comes to me all the work it has done, all the dishes it has washed, all the care it has given in one form or another, all the love it has touched and been touched by.

I begin to feel differently. This appendage I hardly ever notice is not so common. In these few moments of stopping and pondering, a little caring flutters, no matter one finger is crooked and the skin is as wrinkled as a raisin. I also know a courageous young woman that looks down to no hands, no feet which she lost recently. Again I spread my hand before me, move it slowly across in front of me, feeling it, marveling a bit, and actually loving it. This is a different inner space than disarray. This is love, I have a hand. Ah, and here comes gratitude, the route and root of prayer -- soul and spirit food.

We can make an intention to see the world differently, to feel the world differently, to relate differently. Let stopping, let slowing a movement, let feeling the energy field, and let the little things be our teacher.  I experience mystery and magic in the little bee, outside my window. It should not be able to fly because its aerodynamics is against all the laws of aviation. The wings are too small. Yet, flying is how it pollinates much of the world's flowered beauty and food supply.

Last week I swam with the sandpipers, thousands of them in flight. They are feeding up for their non-stop 5000 km flight to South America. They are 23 cm long! I heard the swish of their wings. felt their miraculousness and let the disarray of spirit dissolve in the seeming mundaneness of bird, bee, hand, and heart.

Ah, the power of little things, they strengthen the spirit and fortify the soul. One need only stop in the middle of what one is doing and look, feel, ponder for a minute or two. It's all there. Let the outside become the inside. A wise woman tells me, "You line up your heart and mind. Hold them in this tension. Then it is different, it is only with the heart one sees rightly, the light comes through from the divine, it explodes and a beautiful thing has happened."