Do you ever feel adrift, untethered, as if the very gravity that holds you to the familiar has somehow let go? Of course the experience is terrifying, but the view from that dangerous place can be amazing, giving you a whole new perspective on your world.
What familiar thing might you let go of in order to gain a different view of your life?
The blackberries that ripened in the summer sun meet their end in a pot stirred by a grinning skull. They will lose their individuality, be crushed to something unrecognizable—and be preserved to be re-born in deeper sweetness some winter day. If they had stayed on the vine they would have simply withered away. Sometimes the radical change we fear opens us to undreamed possibilities.
Where do you see radical change in your life or the world around you?
The Mexican celebration of El día de los muertos honors loved ones who have died, not with black shrouds and mourning, but with a colorful celebration featuring bright orange marigolds, colorful paper cut-outs and sugar skulls that are meant to be eaten. Death brings painful loss, but when we accept it as a natural part of the cycle of life then it becomes easier to invite the ghosts and skeletons who surround us to the party.
Whose memory will you celebrate and welcome today?
On Halloween we scare ourselves with skeletons, and as the trees lose their leaves we may think the bare branches ominous or dull. But there is also beauty in the bones of things, in the spare shape of the structures at the center.
In times of loss, have you found beauty in the essentials that remained?
When you were a child, did you ever lose a ball over the fence, a Frisbee onto the roof or a kite into a tree? It’s hard not to panic when something you care about suddenly slips out of sight. Sometimes we managed to get those beloved playthings back, and sometimes we didn’t. But not too infrequently, when you went looking for the item that escaped, you would find something else entirely, something you thought was gone forever, or that you had completely forgotten about.
What have you found when you were looking for something else?
