“Fireflies” Image courtesy of MisterGuy11.
Simple summer moments can prove so sweet.
I just recently returned from a wonderful retreat at the Omega Institute with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) luminaries Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli. We spent most of our time in the first few days engaged in mindfulness practice, cycling through sitting, walking, lying down and yoga meditations. Six AM to 9 PM, almost non-stop makes an endurance challenge, for sure, but it also brings a steadier mind and more open awareness. On one of our extended walking meditations, with 100 or so of us spread across one of Omega’s great lawns as the day’s light faded, the heart of the following poem came to me.
Here’s hoping the moment speaks to you as well.
. . . . .
Walking at Omega, 2014
We move over this open field like
early evening fireflies,
flickering lamps of awareness
in measured motion,
dancing with
the oncoming dark.
Each floats and pauses
under her own power;
Each honors his own track.
Still, we sense each other
in the soft periphery,
conjoined in pulsing multitude.
Surely, we are not alone.
Like any lights,
we, too, will someday extinguish,
falling into
that great darkness
which births
and swallows
all things.
For now, though
—in this moment—
let our hearts rest
in quiet reassurance,
this field of quiet fires
ever available
for those
who choose to see.
Moving alone, yet together. Image courtesy of the Center for Mindfulness at the UMass Medical Center.
