Day 480

Tonight, we drove up to a neighboring city to where Emily and Anders live to go country line dancing. As we got out of the car, Emily pointed out the clouds, and I couldn’t resist taking a photograph for tonight’s post. As I have taken time to study the picture, It has connected me to many different feelings.

Many years ago, I went to a week long training in hands on healing prayer. The week began with a number of sessions regarding meditation, and ways to develop skills to support a meditation practice. What was really important for me in that training, was learning that there is no correct way to meditate. I had previously started and stopped meditation practices over and over, feeling like I wasn’t doing it right. In truth, meditation is a practice. Every time I meditate, I am developing my practice and becoming more skilled in the energy of it. From that training years ago to now, I have consistently meditated. What feels important about this is that it was only at the point where I let go of self doubt and judgement about how I was doing it, that I was actually able to embrace the practice with ease.

Recently, I have been experiencing some dis-ease in my days. It actually began in Portland, and has floated in on and off while I’ve been here in Washington. I have found myself being a bit short with people (including myself), I have had some difficulty concentrating, and I had felt a bit distracted from the Walk for Peace.

Tonight however, when I looked up at the clouds and I remembered the training in meditation, I began to sink into a place of Peace again. You see, being Peace is a practice. I do not do it perfectly, and there are times when Peace eludes me all together. Unfortunately, I never know when I’m going have trouble connecting to Peace. Fortunately, the skills I learned regarding developing my meditation”muscle” are relevant in reconnecting to Peace. Sometimes, it comes through observing something in nature. Others, it is being in community with people like the folks where we went to dance tonight. And sometimes, Peace comes in observing and acknowledging feeling distanced from it. For in this acknowledgement, the space to return to Peace seems to open up.

So tonight, it is with a renewed Peace within, that I offer you my humanness.

Some days, Peace is simply connecting to it within myself. And other days, it is through a memory of a wise meditation teacher that I find my Peace. Tonight, my Peace drops in through the beauty of the clouds and their reminder of the gift of meditation as a practice, which was given so freely to me all those years ago.