Skip to main content
Life is in the parenthesis, in the comma, in the spaces and in the pause.
I have been thinking a lot lately about life in general which of course leads to a contemplation of life in specific, namely mine. I used to approach myself with Jesuit tenacity and finatical austerity. I was certain that I could mold this thing, this life, this "Angelina" into something valid, something purposeful, perhaps even exemplary. I meditated and cajoled, I coaxed and cursed, I exercised and hiked, I did yoga and ate vegetarian, I went to workshops, I read and read and read and then tried to understand it all.
Then I became a mom.
Let's face it, who has the time to examine life with a fine tooth comb once you have exchanged sleep for diaper duty/food preparing/story telling/child tending marathons. I went through an identity crisis with my first son. Wondering, "who am I now?", now that the backdrop of my life is no longer punctuated by long vistas of reflection and wide expanses of self absorption. "Who am I?" and "what?" and "where?". Over the following years I began to find myself in the spaces between the actions. A walk in the park holding a small hand, a spontaneously composed lullaby, a good night kiss, a candlelit supper, a poopy mess, a homework session, a trip to the grocers. These mundane moments ARE our lives and the question isn't how do we rise to meet them but how do we OPEN to greet them. This is where meaning is found and this is where we catch gossamer glimpses of ourselves. As a teacher of young children, one of my jobs is to act as a memory keeper. Children are creatures of the NOW, hurrying from one experience to the next with evident disregard for the one that preceded it. We can deepen their experience by elongating the pauses, asking questions instead of providing answers, documenting the journey so they can remember and by getting out of the way of the process. We adults are not so different. We are rushing through the moments of our lives for altogether different reasons, but rushing just the same. Writing these vignettes is a way for me to prolong the pauses, to extend the in-breath, to enjoy a comma. Writing has become a way of widening those gaps, to savor them, share them, and reflect on them. Thus the in-take of breath in a long distracted day, becomes a story and in that story I glimpse Me, the point where I interface with the world. Not the busy being me, but the quiet residing me, beckoning toward wholeness, toward openness, into LIFE.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Sweet Angelina
Your writing is something to behold girl. Dang. This breathtaking piece of literature should become a daily meditation for me. I recently went through a period of frustration and anger and then had a similar epiphany(not so eloquently thought out though). It makes such a difference to approach life this way but it takes very deliberate thought on my part. Do you think it can become second nature - completely participating in each moment rather than mentally clicking through a to do list that isn't getting done?
still working on it.....
xo thanks so much for sharing, my wise guru!
ps
did your grandma pass on to another realm?
Angelina Lloyd said…
Carla my love,
Yes I think it is possible for present moment appreciation to become second nature, it is a shift in identification. We identify with the mind and it's thoughts. We believe in them. That is our error. We become preoccupied with the mental dance we engage in and its emotional footwork. Who would we be if we just let that go. Who would we be without believing in our thoughts? I imagine that we would be more present for the river of life flowing through us.

Popular posts from this blog

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.

connection

It has been an interesting few weeks.  I have been contemplating connection a great deal as a basic need of being human.  I watch my fellows rushing from one place to the next, gathering technology to themselves like talismans of protection against the emptiness of separation- a perpetual flutter of texts and calls and music and smart phones and GPS and more.  Yet so many of us are longing for the central cord of union- with one another, with ourselves, with life.  It's as if we are frightened of being disappointed, so we retreat deeper and deeper into the tight orbit of self.  My teacher recently filled me in on a little secret...the meaning of life is to LIVE IT .  That isn't tidy or safe.  It is messy and vulnerable and unpredictable and unknown.  And yet LIFE extends an invitation to us in every moment asking us to unleash the breathtaking beauty hidden in our hearts and experience, EXPERIENCE, experience life.  Life isn't singular. ...