Learning to Let Go

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver



For the most part, here in my little blogging corner of the world, I try to focus on what makes me happy in my life--my kids, general domesticity, the natural world, good books, etc...and there is some space here for deep sorrows or mild annoyances to make their appearances as well. The faces of my/our/your troubles show up from time to time throughout all of my days and, I have found, if I try to ignore them, they only insist on staying around longer. So I am learning to invite them to sit down next to me throughout my days, to offer them some lemonade, to chat with them awhile. Maybe then they won't look quite so ugly; maybe then I can see what they have to offer, maybe, just maybe...

I spent some time tonight looking through pictures I have taken, of ways that have chronicled our year here in Portland--pictures that mirror back at me a time of discovery, a time of peace, but most of all a time of tremendous pain. A time of tumult, of chaos and abandonment, of coming together, of falling apart, of rebuilding, of birth and rebirth. And yet, there are those pictures of this year, this moment in time, this seeming eternity, this ephemeral chaos and this fleeting peace, and they reflect exactly what Mary Oliver so pristinely describes above--the world goes on.

Ah yes, it does.

It really does.