A Sacred Mess

The more life that I live and experience the more I realize how much I don’t know and how little I control. Sometimes life feels like a big sloppy mess; sometimes life is hard. But I am learning that life is

A Sacred Mess

full of as much possibility and grace as it is full of messiness. Looking back at choices I made and things that happened in my life, I now realize how I was guided and led to this life I now live. And there is absoultely nothing I would change or undo. I am so blessed. Like a seed I’ve been shaped by mud, light and air, sorrow, beauty and joy.

Many seeds eventually become beautiful flowers. But first a seed needs to crack open and travel down through the mud, growing roots into the earth and at the same stretching upward towards the sun. The seed cannot control the growth process, only submit to the laws of nature. A seed needs water, sunlight, soil, and patience to grow and mature. When it is time the plant sets a bud. And when each bud is ready, it opens. Most flowers last only for a short time, then they are gone. Perhaps that is one of the reasons most of us love flowers. They are both a gift of beauty and grace, and a reminder of how transient life is.

Without suffering, there’s no happiness. So we shouldn’t discriminate against the mud. We have to learn how to embrace and cradle our own suffering and the suffering of the world, with a lot of tenderness.
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering

Like a flower I can only meet what is here now, allowing myself to experience sorrow, grief, and loss along with choosing to see beauty everywhere, experience love, and to trust and open to life’s innate intelligence. Like a seed I break, bend, rise…and through it all something holds me in deep holy grace. The more I relax and trust that everything is unfolding in the only way it can, the easier it is to experience the intersection of spirit and matter. Then I realize that the divine is in everything everywhere, even in the mud. And that everything is happening the only way it could possibly happen.

It pisses me off when someone tells me to “Let go and let God…” but that’s just the impatient part of me who thinks that she can figure out and control life. The wise small voice that only speaks when I am quiet and receptive knows better. So I say

Behold the mess, bless the mess

and know that everything is unfolding just as it needs to unfold.

Most people are afraid of suffering. But suffering is a kind of mud to help the lotus flower of happiness grow. There can be no lotus flower without the mud.
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering

As I get older I experience more aches and pains in my body. And while I am doing what I can to strengthen and support a healthy body, I am noticing that age is having its way. I now know in a more visceral way that I will not live forever. No one does. So I’m determined to savor each moment, each day, and to also make choices that as much as possible allow me to live without regrets. I don’t want to regret not telling those I love that I love them. And I don’t want my last words to someone I care about to be angry or hurting words. Saying “I love you and care about you. You are an important part of my life,” shouldn’t go unsaid. To the best of my ability I plan to say those words or act out those words to my dear ones (friends and family) for the rest of my life.

Waking up this morning I smile. I have twenty-four hours to live. I vow to live them deeply and learn to look at the beings around me with the eyes of compassion.
― Thich Nhat Hanh, No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering

I hope that you too can bless and embrace the sacred mess of your life.

May you walk in beauty.

Note: I made today’s photos at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum yesterday.