Love Life’s Strength

(A view of the ocean on a cold winter morning in windswept Blanc Sablon on the Lower North Shore  of Quebec)

I am sitting here this morning overlooking the partially frozen ocean contemplating, reminiscing and wondering.  Perhaps I am also in “wonder” about all that has happened over the past year and one half since leaving Scotland.  I have been awake since before six spending my early waking hours seeking guidance for the day, for direction and for life.  As always, the guidance just doesn’t appear.  Yet, I know it will in its own time. 

It seems as if I was more connected when I was in Scotland than since I arrived here.  Although there, I did have many ups and downs and lots of doubts about my work and where I was going, it seemed that there was more guidance and direction of some sort.  But there I was able there to sit by the sea, as I am this morning and draw sustenance from its vastness and depth, glean understanding from its ebb and flow and put into context the waves of energy that affect us all in their rise and fall.

As I sit here this morning, I know that I did spend time in Scotland just sitting and watching the ocean.  This was especially so in Cruden Bay, where I could sit by my large living room window, both in the daytime and nighttime, and see the ocean, hear its thunder and feel its quiet.  Even in the other places that I lived I would just go and walk the beach or sit in the car or even read a paper as I sat beside the water somewhere.  I don’t do that now, even though I am near water in Beauharnois but it’s not the ocean.  My life seems so frenetic perhaps even frantic, as I try and put all that is in disarray in order, as if I could.

I guess I have felt the need to make everything “perfect” and orderly when, in fact there has been no order to it (or should I say order as I understand it).  The more I try the more disorderly it becomes and the more stress I put on everyone and the more stressed I become.  Always wanting to do “the right thing” instead of doing “what’s right to do”.  This was something that I learnt and wrote when I was in Scotland.

Yet, when I look out the window this morning I see that all is perfect, despite the snow, the ice and the cold.  Everything is just as it should be, ordered by a power much greater than our own.  Perhaps “power “ is the wrong word maybe it should be a “love” greater than we possess.  This kind of love is so great, that it lets things (and people) be as they are with no great need to fix everything that appears to be going amiss at any moment or point in time. This love is so strong; that it knows everything will work out, in its own way, in its own time, perhaps not as we expect, but as it should be in a world, which is perfect.

Order like structure is such a misnomer because neither can be perfect, neither can it be rigid nor can it be predicted.  Both must be reflective of the many components and elements of which they are comprised and the reactions that are imminent as these are mixed.  Order and structure have to reflect the movement of time and space, much the same as the ocean and the land have to reflect the shifting of the tides.  This natural order and structure is ever so subtly shifting in a continuum.  This movement is much more intensified, when affected by the pull of the moon, the swell of the tide or when affected by the tempests of the wind.  We, as humans and one component of life, have to keep reminding ourselves that we are part of this order and structure and are affected similarly by these aspects of nature (what’s natural), as are all the other creatures and elements.

Yes, it seems as if I have occupied this space before – in Halifax and in Scotland and I guess so in Newfoundland.  Each time having to come to terms with the vagaries of life, the natural order that won’t change, even with our strongest push or pull and the storms of life that come and go.  Each time there is something new and different to learn.  Always though, it is having to come to terms with my own lack of power to change that, which won’t be changed, nor affect that which won’t be affected.  There is the realization that the learning made available by the power of life and the essence of living is increased only slightly with each experience, no matter how dramatic or subtle the happening.

What seems to be constant is this realization, and where I always arrive, that life is about love, love is about life and “power” is an anomolity that creates disorder and strife in what could be order and calm.  And, I do know that I prefer order to disorder, calm to strife.  I have to appreciate that I have to learn to love more and control less.  I have to reinforce within myself that love will create the greatest order that life can allow.  It is love that will bring calm and peace to confusion and disorder even that which I have been experiencing over the past year.

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