Wisdom is always and only a communal experience.
We may have moments of discovery in the silence of our practice or presence, but those moments are always rooted in some greater communal presence.
On a recent Sunday, I met friends at a nearby restaurant for brunch and then popped by other friends’ home for a light meal and a chat in the evening.
I arrived at brunch and hugged my friends, lingering for just a moment to sense their presence, care, and welcome. Sitting down, I took a breath and pulled myself out of my busy morning and into the presence of my friends. It felt comfortable and warm to slip into B’s presence, whom I see fairly regularly, and a touch of anticipation to chat with A, whom I had not seen in a few years. It was fun to rest for a moment in that mixture of comfort and curiosity.
A started to catch me up on some changes in his life since last we talked. I watched his face as he talked. I could see how much these changes meant to him in his eyes and expression. He vulnerably shared moments of self-discovery, learning, letting go, and accepting. As he talked, I experienced my own happiness for him and my sadness at some of his losses. I felt curiosity rising in me as he explored the journey he had been on with us. I felt deep, deep hope. A had been willing to embark on a journey of growth, which at times had been lonely and had required that he hold priorities that left him separated from some familiar activities and people. His story, his life, were beautiful evidence of the journey of healing and self-discovery that is available to anyone – should we have the courage (the whole-heartedness) to embark. As he told his story, I gathered his joy, self-discovery, and my own curiosity and hope and held them, and they were good!
At one point later in the conversation I looked at my two friends with a smile and said, “I come with news!”
I felt their attention and their care leaning in, and it too was good.
As I told B and A about a decision I had made to explore a new avenue of learning and professional practice, and how I had come to that decision, my own courage deepened. I shared a challenge I would face in bringing about this new journey, and I could feel their hope for solutions. B, who knows me well, shared his excitement about the process that had brought me to this decision and the possibilities that lay ahead. I gathered in their hope and my deepened courage – and it was so good!
The conversation, now rooted in our presence and shared stories and experiences, sprouted and branched and bloomed in many directions. Our presence together was a living thing that we were sharing in those moments. No one drove the conversation, but our open and vulnerable presence with each other created the paths through which Presence could come to us. It was good – deliciously, deeply good.
After a quiet afternoon at home, I got in my car and began the drive over to C & D’s home. On the short drive over, I thought of how deeply I care for these friends, and how much their own journeys, and their openness in sharing them, mean to me. I felt the privilege of having someone genuinely open their heart and share their experience with me. As I waited at a stoplight, I sunk deeply into that feeling, and it was so good.
I arrived at my friends’ home to hugs and greetings and smiles and a warm, warm welcome.
We sat together at a table and shared a beautiful and hopeful blessing that C & D spoke and I repeated after them. I saw their smiles as I repeated the words and gestures, smiles of welcome and joy at a shared experience, and the sharing of it, allowing ourselves to be moved by it, was deeply good.
We shared a meal and our lives, and I shared my news. The food and the shared experience of each others’ lives, at that moment interwoven by presence and welcome, were both delicious, both rich and nourishing.
After dinner, we leaned back into comfortable chairs and allowed the conversation to weave its way around us and through us. We were at the same moment separate and intimately joined. The mystery of it, that unique alchemy that trust and care and welcome works in us, felt sweetly near and at the same time it felt like we had immersed ourselves in the depths of a Presence both beyond and bigger. It felt equal parts like receiving a gift and being the gift. Lacking words to fully describe what I was feeling, I simply took in the experience wordlessly – and it was wonder-fully good.
As I sit here today at my computer, reflecting on the experiences of that day, all that I had gathered stirs inside me. Closing my eyes and taking a breath to still my busy mind, I can sort through that day as I would sort through the rocks and shells I brought home from the beach. Each feeling, each experience, was chosen and collected, pocketed in my heart, because of a unique beauty, the way it caught and reflected the light, a surprising colour, the turn and shape of it that caught my soul’s attention. One by one, as I had traversed that day, I had gathered and saved each of these beautiful moments, a pocketful of Goodness.
I’m also reflecting on the day-to-day work of that gathering. So many days I forget, I get distracted, my mind chatters away incessantly, and I miss these moments. I remind myself often and (mostly) tenderly how changed I am by that act of gathering, of being present and savoring, how being present in my life buoys me.
And I share all of this with you because I want to encourage you to consider how you too could be buoyed by being more fully present to the beauty and the joy and the depth of our experience of each other and the experience of the exponential Presence we enter when we allow trust and vulnerability and humility to draw us into each other’s presence.
I’m not talking about those “Hi, how’re you doing how’s the weather good to see you we really should get together sometime take care gotta run” conversations we have far too many of.
I’m talking about time and depth.
I’m talking about vulnerability.
And humility.
I’m talking about opening our hearts and souls, not our schedules and day-timers.
I’m talking about connecting not texting.
I’ve always been a bad social media friend. If you are hoping for lots of texts and messages from me, I’m not your gal.
And I’m getting worse.
There are more and more times and places in my life when my phone is both off-limits and out of reach, and I am intent on adding to that list.
I am committed to coming home from work and putting the phone down. I’m not fully there yet, but I’m trying. I’m committed to no phones at meals or coffees.
I’m committed to making eye contact with the barista at Starbucks and the pharmacist who hands me my prescription and collecting the goodness in those moments together.
I’m committed to sitting quietly in my doctor’s office and allowing my mind to rest instead of immediately filling the space with texts and Instagram and Twitter, and gathering in the goodness of a quiet space with my own thoughts.
It’s work I begin afresh every day, and some days my practice is fuller than other days. The beauty of every new morning is the chance to begin (again).
Perhaps tomorrow is your morning to begin, to have an extended conversation with someone that goes beyond facts – that goes beyond this person drives me nuts and that person needs to get their act together and I can’t believe how busy I am and the weather sure is a pain?
We can practice together being vulnerably open.
Presence, capital ‘P’ Presence, is as deep a need for us as food and shelter.
Loneliness is an epidemic, and a deadly one.
Wisdom, living wisely, is not something we reach in silence and isolation. Wisdom is always and only a communal experience. We may have moments of discovery in the silence of our practice or presence, but those moments are always rooted in some greater communal presence – presence to those near us and like us physically and those distant from us in time and physical being, but near to us energetically. Shared presence in which we gather and savour what is good.
Living a wise life requires humility, requires vulnerability, and requires presence.
Living a wise life requires that we intentionally fill our pockets with the shells and pretty stones we find as we explore and share our experiences; and emptying our pockets later on, we celebrate again and enter again the joy of presence and Presence – the sharing of one and the entering into the other.
Living a wise life, a mindful life, asks of us that we cultivate, recognize, gather, and savor the goodness we can only find in each other.
I’ll begin afresh tomorrow, as I do every morning, gathering the beauty and the joys of moments here and there. Perhaps tomorrow is your morning to begin afresh with me.