CONNECTION

it's been Nature and me, me and Nature all the way.

When I was little there was church, which i felt kindly toward....and I loved Jesus and felt inspired by him.

and then there was what I called...Connection.

the ultimate meaning in the universe. a sense of belonging. The reason for being here...for being alive.

A flooding flow, an exhilaration, an aliveness, a oneness. A rightness. A realness. A beingness. a Connectedness. A communion. A touching within, an inner bondedness.

And i most often found it in Nature

also in Music.

in Color, drawing/art, animals.

But certainly found it in Nature.

I wanted to be outside in puddles after the rainstorm.

I wanted to do my homework on the deck in the light of the sunset.

I wanted to stomp on the carport to the drums of a thunderstorm.

I wanted to speak silently to the mountains outside my carport, through my heart.

I considered them my most constant friends.

...Constancy. Endurance. The energy of mountains.

i could spill it all to them. They were there.

I feel held, I felt connected.

It wasn't until many years later that I would search for another word to define Connection. This space within me that was my Actual Life. That was where I lived, for real. I came to a situation in which I needed another word to translate this space for another human being.

I had been spiraling down a bit, really a slow, low slide over time, and I needed someone to talk to... and I met with someone referred though insurance. And she was fine. But I realized there was an enormous chunk of Life itself not touched in our clinical conversations. A huge gap that didn't include all of Me in it, it didn't include the totality of Life in it. And I had to dig deep and find a way to tell her this.

I'm not sure I thought of the word Connection then, in my early twenties, when almost everything about the real me had been lost, but I finally stumbled upon the word......

🤔spirituality??? and offered it to her with a question mark.

"I think I need something a little more...spiritual....?"

And that was the tipping point...

she just happened to share an office with a woman who became my first and longest spiritual teacher...20 years and running...and we explored healing of all sorts, spirituality, interfaith ministry, many many many things. And it has been amazing. But standing from here, where I know me. I love me. I am unfettered by me.My inner life is bedrock and the searching has softened to Being...All the terms and words melt away. they are meaningless. Spirituality leads to debates perhaps. Religion certainly does.

Connection.

Connection to The One

that shines through the All

The Allness

The Is-ness.

Connection.