At one point I wanted to leave my city. I was getting stir crazy to see the world and was touched with a bout of wanderlust. I’d heard the Jesuits send out their novices into the world to survive – to beg for food and live with the poorest of the poor in order to understand what that side of life is all about. This was an exercise in faith and understanding life on life’s terms to walk in the skin of those we serve.
I gave myself a car, a small bank roll and a cell phone to ensure I would be safe. This was recommended by a friend who was concerned for my well-being, and I’m glad he recommended that.
The world of adventure called me and the muses of the road beckoned me to attend to a world I, seemingly, knew very little about. I started in Ohio and drove to the east coast and zig zagged across the country in my Silver ’95 Honda Civic. I stopped at spiritual places to learn more from others and was able to spend extended periods of time in different places as a result of my willingness to work for my housing and food. I stopped at monasteries and communes, ashrams and temples to place my fingers on the spiritual pulse of a post 911 America.
I wandered around the country seeing new places and spending a year asking questions in small town America. I learned to camp and basic survival skills like building a fire out of lint and rubbing alcohol. I lived on very little, scrimped and eked out the most from the little cash I had. It was a test for me to see if I had the faith to venture into the wild with nothing and come out on the other side.
I saw how homeless people lived. I experienced the humiliation of isolation and the desperate need for community, especially for those who live on the margins and have no connection to something permanent. I learned that every person seeks out community and this is the key to survival. Having worked with groups that fed the poor, I learned how homeless people learn more about others and pass along information on where people are seen in order to keep track and ensure that all are attended to and helped if desperate circumstances overcome them.
I learned the power of nature. When you live in nature, you attune to it in ways you never considered. You respect the power of storms. You are humbled by the destruction it can impart, and the sublime calm and beauty it inspires when the storm has passed. I’ll never forget spending a lightning storm on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. My car was pummeled with rain and the distant bolts of lightning and crashes of earsplitting thunder inspires deference to its power.
Most importantly, I learned that I didn’t need to leave home to gain experience. I once read that a great poet said, “A true poet finds truth in the simplicity of his surroundings” or words to that effect.
I’ve heard it said by others in the following:
“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where others see nothing.” Camille Pissaro French Impressionist painter. Henry David Thoreau said it another way. “It’s not what you look at that matters, but it’s what you see.”
I was surrounded by poetry in my own hometown. I’ve since learned to see things with an artist’s eye. As I grow older and the days pass faster, I realize that time is a fickle beast. The days are fleeting and the nights are few, but we seek to understand where we are in the time we are given and with those who have been placed in our lives.
Tucked away in the vestiges of sacred moments are the implicit understandings that will take us where we need to be. I sit in silence in my backyard on a perfect day. I watch the nightfall and the slow envelopment of darkness. I have discovered the magnificent poetry of simplicity. I’ve evolved from the restlessness of youth to become a tempered miner of mystery.
My neighborhood has all I need to see: microcosms of communities in ant hills. Patterned designs and sacred geometric art in tree trunks and shapes of leaves. Tall grasses to plant my feet and ground myself in a reality of connecting to earth and earth connecting to me. A park with a cacophony of sounds harmonizing to the rhythm of my walk. A taste of the farmer’s market on the village green on a lazy Sunday where neighbors congregate.
Every now and then we need a wake-up call to dive into simplicity with all senses at the ready, alert to the temperatures of meanings; the hot spots that set the imagination whirling and finding the cool sweet spots of engaging with an eye on being present; encountering life on its poetic terms and marveling at magic in our midst. William Blake had it right. “To see a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour.”
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