Yesterday my cam shaft synchronizer and cam shaft sensor quit working and had to be replaced. Some days are like that. Neither the synchronizer nor the sensor called ahead, asked for an appointment, requested a place on the calendar, or cleared their little throats and announced their intentions. Never mind my plans. They just quit.
We have the idea that our plans are sacrosanct. That once we have a plan, or even a schedule, that’s it. We are not to be bothered. We cannot step aside. Make way. Here we come.
Then, we come upon something that doesn’t care. Cam shaft synchronizers and sensors don’t care. And, that’s how it should be. The day should be free to unfold according to its own needs and inclinations. We might have an idea of what the day will hold, but only as a general kind of direction, a suggestion of possibility. We should keep ourselves open and receptive to the breeze of chance and timing, and allow ourselves to be blown off course into a different course, a new direction.
We only like to think we know what we are doing with our lives. We only like to think we know what we should be doing, where we should be going. We also like to think that our calendars and schedules are magical tools delivering LIFE unto us for the low, low price of perfect obedience and faithfulness to their requirements and demands. If we only show up, regularly and reliably, where we are supposed to be, when we are supposed to be there, the heavens will open, and the gods will bless us with prosperity and happiness and all the abundance we can unwrap and dust and polish forever. And we despise cam shaft synchronizers and sensors for screwing with our plan of salvation and interfering with our happiness.
What is turbulence and what is flow? Do we have a clue? We only know what we want. We have no idea of what we should want. We only think what we think. We have no idea of what we should think. We live as though the great task of life is to impose our ideas for life onto life, to force our lives into the pattern, the mold, the structure, the design we have in mind for them. “Ah, now this is more like it! This is how it should be! This is what we have in mind for ourselves and our lives!”, we say, describing our idea of flow. “And, that, that is ugly, and disgusting, and unwanted, and it carries us far, far away from the golden shores of our dreams and aspirations,” we say, describing our idea of turbulence.
We are driven by our preferences, locked into our desires. What do we know about what should be? What do we know about what could be, if given an opening by the breeze of chance and timing? Listen to the moment! What is stirring? Listen within to your own heart and soul! What is stirring? How can the one mesh with the other? Never mind what your mind has in mind!
Life is not just what happens to us, or what we can make happen with enough resources and willfulness. Life is the dance of inner with outer, of who we can be within merging with who we can be without. Life is the birth of possibility, the emergence of being into the opportunity of being. Which we miss with our ideas of how things ought to be, and our determination to arrange our lives according to our liking, and our refusal to let anything get in our way. But, there are cam shaft synchronizers and sensors to wake us up and call us to be mindful, to be aware, and ask us to dance.
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Forgiveness does not perpetuate the wrong. Forgiveness does not say, “Hit me again. I can take it. I love you anyway.” Forgiveness says, “That was wrong. Don’t do that any more. And, don’t think the future will be as if there is no past. There will be limits and restrictions in place. You will have to earn my trust over time, but I will grant you that opportunity, and offer you the possibility of relationship conditional on your willingness and ability to do right by me and all these others.”
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