Trusting Life

Today I hike to Fawn Lake in Dupont Forest and immerse myself one last time; fall coolness in the air, but in the perfect lake, still the summer’s  warmth. Slice of heaven, I hear a bicyclist say to his friend as they pedal past.

In thanksgiving, I offer to Fawn Lake many shells I gathered at the ocean, as well as the complex pumice stones I once collected from the shore of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala.

When I do my morning Tai Chi on the little pier, it feels like a true speaking of my being to this holy place. One series of Tai Chi moves called Fairy Weaving at the Shuttle has four pauses, hands raised to the sky in each direction. This morning during those pauses, I feel the sky dome turn transparent! I see myself, a small woman by a lake on the pale blue dot of earth, stretching my arms to the distant stars, in love and adoration and belonging.

I am here, now, present. My breath allows me to become one with this pristine place. Not a human set down within a scene, but a being who is an integral presence in the beingness around me. I intend that I find this same serenity in the place to which I soon go, Ajijic (Ah-he-heek’) Mexico. I intend by the grace of this sacred North Carolina lake to return again and again, wherever I plant myself, to the Present Point of Power. To trust in life.

And here’s how it looks when you’re floating in the water’s arms, and everything’s upside down!