an addendum...seeing

 Sorry for the second post. I was driving to Fuquay yesterday and I was thinking how much I hate that drive on 40. It has never really been a very happy drive. Too often it has been a drive to hospital visits, funerals, appointments back to my hometown. A few times we have taken off to go back to Chapel Hill or Durham for something special or head off to catch 95 to go up to DC, but mostly 40 is not a happy stretch.

Yesterday was no exception and the further down the road the more I colored in how unattractive the drive was.  No real beauty to look at. That damned Floridian who tried to run me down..."those drivers"..and then it hit me. I remembered that i was inside my own head. I was barely cognizent of the road or anything around me. Don't get me wrong, I was paying attention to my driving, but I was not SEEING anything...I was in my head..what I was "going to"..not where I was..and it was miserable, sad, and I was feeling it..living IT, instead of where I was. I remembered a story this very spiritual man once told that I heard at a little episcopal church in Lime Rock, Ct. He said that when he was unwell spiritually, the inside of his mind was a series of mirrors. Everthing reflected back inwards and all he saw was his own self, his own thoughts, his own isolaiton, his own self centerdness, whatever it was that he was thinking...projecting..that was is mind. But, as he began to grow spiritually, each one of those mirrors turned into a beautiful, clear window...and he began to see outward, the world around him, the MOMENTS that he was in...other people, other's points of view, and the only mirrors that were left were there to be used as needed for self reflection and awareness.

That visual..that image that he gave over 20 years ago was so powerful for me. Here I was, riding down 40..and I was trapped by my own mirrors. What I was "seeing" had nothing to do with the moment I was in..it was what I was projecting on my own mirrors..living inside my head.

I opened a window.

Fall had come and I saw color I had not seen. Light was hitting. The clouds broke at time.
I grabbed my camera and I took pictures as I was driving of this color, these clouds, the sun. It was all so beautiful. I was in that moment, not the one ahead and somehow 40 did not seem so bad...no, it was actually very wonderful.

I had a very emotional visit in Fuquay. It is going to be a process..but on the way out...my window as still open and I saw a barn I have seen my whole life..but I "saw" it for the first time. It was backdropped by some forebodding clouds, wrapped and being absorbed by the countryside..a by gone life giving up itself to a new day. What I had just left felt oddly similar....somehow that barn was a comfort and somehow very beautiful...no...dignified.

I am glad I was able to "see"

thanks be!