The Shift That Shifts Everything

I would choose again, that I may see.  A Course In Miracles

Today is housecleaning day and the way I’m cleaning is stressful, making me edgy and tense. I’m fighting with a broken appliance I have to fix and feel victimized that one of the screws won’t come off. It’s as if a trickster god is tightening the screw as I’m trying to loosen it. Next, I’m angry with the dishwasher that my wife should have emptied but didn’t.

Mercifully, I catch my growing negativity in time. I sit myself down and let go of my impatient, stressful attitude. I take a breath and the strong passion I feel at this point in my life rises up, reaching for what I want, which is to embrace each day and live it fully. Which is to be present and at peace in whatever I’m doing. As I find my way to a peaceful attitude, what comes to mind is a stanza in a poem by D.H. Lawrence I memorized years ago.

As we live, we are transmitters of life.
And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow through us.
Give and it shall be given unto you is still the truth about life.
It means kindling the life-quality where it was not,
even if it’s only in the whiteness of a washed pocket-handkerchief.

As my attitude shifts, a sudden glow of light that can only be seen from the inside fills the space my being has reclaimed. At that very moment a cloud blocking the sun passes and the room fills with sunlight. All at once, everything is alive and I’m awake, as large as the moment. I stand up, look around to see what chores still remain, and as I do my heart fills with gratitude to be living in this lovely house. Lately I’ve worried that in this bad economy my income could dry up and I could lose my home. At this moment I’m grateful that it’s mine to enjoy today. 

The remaining chores flow like a dance. As I’m raking the last of the leaves at the front of the house, a bird flying by catches my eye and I watch it land in the Japanese maple tree across the street. The maple leaves have all turned a most beautiful color of red. Many of the leaves have now shed, creating a velvet blanket of red on the sidewalk. I look down the street and notice that the Sycamores are now completely bare. Their branches are dull gray, though the winter light has given them the look of polished silver in places. From where I stand, the street gradually slopes down to the avenue. Across the avenue is a large field covered in tall green grass and overhead a falcon, suspended in mid air, scans the field for food. Above everything is a lovely welkin. My whole being merges with the beauty of all I see and for a moment my heart feels it might break.

“Choose peace,” I think as I turn to go inside, “and life rewards me with all this beauty.”

That night, as I’m about to go to sleep, I ponder that maybe that trickster god wasn’t toying with me at all, when I was trying to fix the appliance. Perhaps he was guiding me toward an experience that would shine a light into my life.

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(1) D. H. Lawrence, “We Are Transmitters,” Selected Poems (New York: Viking Press, 1959), 105.