Normally on Sunday afternoons I start my Grace Note for Monday morning.
But yesterday offered an unusual opportunity: watching football (the American kind).
Now, I must confess, I haven’t watched football in a few years. I don’t even know all the rules.
But it was such a sweet adventure.
I had printed out a google map of the location where I was invited along with my husband. My son arrived home unexpectedly for the weekend from college, so he joined us.
Our destination?
The home of someone I knew in high school who I had not seen in about 30 years.
The map showed that we would be traveling for 40 minutes and into a slightly unfamiliar neighborhood. There would be other high school friends there, too, who I also hadn’t seen since 1979.
Now that’s what I call an adventure.
Paths not crossed, yet lives being lived, the business of being human, growing, expanding, becoming aware….how had it played out for these friends?
And these were the football guys from HS. I mean, the popular team players. The guys ON the football team.
Well….they were all totally welcoming, kind and fun. Long stories were not necessary, details were not exchanged like “what do you do, where do you work, how long have you been married, how many kids do you have.”
There was a game to watch!
It reminded me that people connect, then separate, then connect again….like dancing.
I’m in a car driving to another nearby town, then I’m in someone’s new kitchen circled with others holding hands hearing a blessing of the food and people gathered, then meeting new people and eating guacamole and chips, then high-fiving people in a room, curious, delighted, in the now, sharing.
Yesterday, there was a thought of wondering why I am called to drive 40 minutes in what turned out to be heavy traffic for part of the way, in order to watch something that could be watched at home….
…but then the thought “who would I be without the thought that there has to be a reason?”
Who would you be without the thought that you should know why you are going here or there, or that there must be a clear goal, or a purpose, for what you do?
Without the thought that you need a good logical reason to be drawn over there, or that you should avoid long travel, or that it is hard or arduous.
Once at an Adyashanti retreat, there was a woman who stood up to share on the very last day at the last hour of a one-week retreat in California at a meditation retreat conference center.
She said that very recently she had been searching for something on the internet, not even sure what….and came across Adya’s website and began reading.
She then knew she had to come meet him.
She puzzled about it. Because she lived in Australia. And she wasn’t a meditation retreat type person. She smoked cigarettes and ate meat and had no personal spiritual practice.
But she got on an airplane and showed up at the retreat a week later.
I don’t remember what she looked like, but I felt her braveness and her clarity. There was no “should” about being there. She was so honest about feeling like she didn’t fit in.
Adya said “Oh! It was you who was smoking! I loved that, it reminded me of my grandpa.”
Who would we be without the story that it’s easier or safer to stay home, or that we should know why we’re called here or there, or that we don’t fit in?
Even in the smallest ways…like showing up to gather with friends just because that’s the next thing to do, with joy, even if we have no idea what’s going on in football.
“Being and non-being create each other. Difficult and easy support each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after follow each other.” ~ Tao Te Ching #2
Turning the thoughts around and letting them come alive and living them out: I don’t have to know the purpose, I follow the joy, I say yes, I say no…I relax into the way of it…there doesn’t have to be a reason, I’m not running things here.
The adventure of a lifetime!
“If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.” ~ Byron Katie
Same with moving towards something you love, what brings joy, honesty, connection, play, lightness.
For no reason, you know to do it.
Love, Grace