Sky Mind in Wide Open Spaces

I live in the “window” between the prairie grasslands and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. All around me is this feeling of endless spaciousness, expanding to the east. To the west, the mountains arise before me, Hermit’s Peak most central, where a hermit priest lived, years ago, in a cave that has a spring still dripping from the ceiling. I wonder if he survived on his chi-enhancing practices.

For me, to practice my TCC, outside in the midst of this background, seems to be my daily mission. Usually one or the other, my front or back porch, has the protection I need from the weather to do this. I rarely have to face practicing inside, and in those times, I choose a place by the window. It isn’t that I am looking around while I practice. I do stay in my movement, generally, but my awareness is everywhere. Living here, I have developed a keen eye for movement, trained by the coyotes and the birds. This is a wildlife refuge and wildlife are forever showing up, unexpectedly. Confession: I do keep my binoculars with me, just in case, for wonderful species that I “must” see that will sometimes wander in during my practice.

Tuesday, it had been snowing all night and continued all day. Gratitude and snow, simultaneously falling at about a quarter inch an hour, lightly, softly, silently wrapping everything in a state of grace. My back porch was perfect for practice, protected from all intrusion, for the whole countryside was “socked in.” The white Charolais cattle were apparitions, stolid white phantom ghosts quietly grazing on the barren, drought-stricken land. I call it the “grazing of no grazing” for there is no grass left to eat, after this persistent drought. The ubiquitous red-winged blackbirds were singing their song of gratitude with constant visitations to my feeders.

What happens within me during these solitary practices? Although I am “alone,” I am not alone in this vast arena of all-pervading life. There is some great thing at work, in me and outside me, that brings us all together into the oneness of the chi. I trust and feel it, that what Justin says is true, our inner transformation is accelerated with our practices. The softness, the continuity, the congruity, the openness gradually comes, over time, whether we practice inside or outside, as the gift to our being-ness, and I am grateful.

* * *

Strange,
amid
sad losses;
consequences,
wonder-filled,
open
new