“Perhaps / The truth depends on a walk around a lake”
Wallace Stevens, the poet (who had a day job at an insurance company), considered a seventeen-and-a-half-mile walk “a good days jaunt.” He walked in town, in the woods, and along highways. It was the walking that mattered. His poems depended on the enlivening of his senses, and the movement and observations that walking cultivated. It was in the early 1900s, when people walked more. And when they walked they did not have phones or earphones, and so were more attentive to their surroundings, noticing smell and sound and sight, even touch and taste. The mind was open to make space for new arrivals in the form of insight, phrases or words.
Delight
“The more stuff you love the happier you will be.”― Ross Gay, The Book of Delights
The nature of synchronicity* is surprise and delight. Those moments when the gods seem to collude in unexpected ways to make astonishment manifest. All kinds of things happen without any apparent cause, conspiring to make the impossible possible. It’s the feeling that something outside you has unexpectedly touched and answered an inner yearning.
You have all had moments of synchronicity, moments that confirm the connection between the inner and outer world. Something that has no causal explanation. I find I am often more open to this while traveling, wandering, or being in a strange place. Generally when I am away from my long list of things to do. I am not trying to get from A to Z. It happens when I am no longer expecting to know what I will find, but just noticing things. Transitions are a good time for synchronicity.
Pause at the Threshold
I decided to take to heart this idea that the gods want to know that you are serious. What you are reaching for will be supported by your undivided attention and fervor. So I packed a suitcase and some supplies, shut down my email, and found a retreat in easy driving distance….
We aren’t alone. It is a relief when I remember that there are intelligences that are non-human. Other voices are trying to reach us, to teach us, to guide us. Sometimes I need to get away from busyness and my usual routine in order to hear. All of you have had moments when the veil briefly lifts and there is a timeless moment of clear perception. This joy, this moment of belonging to everything … isn’t that what we all reach for? And what human can take credit for this?