Slowing the roll

“May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny buy useful. May I stay forever in the stream.”
~ Mary Oliver, Upstream

Grandiose ideas.
Dreams of fame.
Mixed motivations outing the carefully concealed conflicts of our humanity.

There just may be some space in every human soul for delusions of grandeur, for jumps and leaps that don’t fit our frame, for hopes that soar higher into realms that aren’t ours. No matter how introverted we might be, no matter how desperately we might run from the spotlight, there still can live, deep in the recesses of our beings, a tiny clawing creature who wants a pedestal and praise. Who lunges forward, seeking credit for Something Big. Who keeps one eye always on the hope to rise above the rest.

The ego can be a bit of a bastard. This is the conclusion I’ve come to.

We can seek with all that we have to find the truth of our naked little souls and set that truth into action. We can find our lives upended by grace, our personal vipers pinned beneath our heels with bright skies shining above. Still, the shadows fall full and the draw towards things that are Not Us remains in action. All the humility we’ve worked so hard to cultivate, vaporized once more in the face of that clawing thing that still rises within us.

But then again…
Without the darkness, where is the light?
Without the depths, where are the heights?
Without the suffering, where i s the love?

And too, without the ego, where is the humility?

*Leafcutter ants. They’re hard to see, but they stay in the stream, and they get some shit done.*

It helps to remember how great the tiny really is. How staying in our lane can sometimes amount to much greater things. It helps–me, anyway–to remember that it is not a small thing to play our small part, no matter how tiny it looks or feels.

For the tiny multiplies.
The tiny builds the All.
The tiny holds up the world.

*And sometimes even the leafcutters prefer to Do It Self.*

“We are made up of the same atoms and the same light signals as are exchanged between pine trees in the mountains and stars in the galaxies.”
~ Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

“… half of infinity is still infinite. A hint of infinity is infinite too–if we can take the hint. A trait here, a trait there… of hints and traits we make our way.”
~ Chet Raymo, The Soul of the Night

Like St. Mary,

May I be the tiniest nail
in the house of the universe,
tiny buy useful.
May I stay forever in the stream.

For that is so very much.

As we struggle to find our place in the work of this desperate day,
As we swing,
moment by moment,
from resistance
to rest,
And back again,

As we ask what is enough?
What is ours?
What is for us?

As we seek
in what ways can we resist?
in what ways can we rest?

As we find our way to what is ours to do,
may we find the spaces where our true selves can thrive,
where our truest parts can serve with the greatest integrity,
where our naked little souls fit best and most truthfully
into the divine drama underway.

As we find our way to survival in this wrenching world,
may we sink into all that feeds our soul,
may we protect our naked little souls from all that sucks us dry,
may we find the spaces where our true selves can thrive.

As we find our balance,
our pendulum,
our rhythm,
as we find our place in the dance,
may we never stray from who we are,
love
incarnate.

“How do we pick up on a signal that can neither be heard, no be defined? The answer is not to look for it. Nor do we attempt to predict or analyze our way into it. Instead we create an open space that allows it. A space so free of the normal overpacked condition of our minds that it functions as a vacuum. Drawing down the ideas that the universe is making available.”
~ Rick Rubin, The Creative Act