Saturday, August 18, 2012

Heart Whispering

We are so lucky. I am standing at the edge of the forest listening to the trees talking. They don’t speak the same language at home in British Columbia. Here in Northern Ontario when the breeze blows the trees sway and whisper secrets that stir my soul. My senses are so alive of late. I wonder how I never noticed this magical communication so vividly before.

The lake is still, unbroken glass calling me to break its surface with surrender into calm. Is there any companion greater than nature when one’s heart is cracked wide open?

When I was 18 I met a boy and our story was never completed.  He was a romantic memory, one that resurrected in a recent conversation and prompted a Google search to see if I could locate him. Easy enough and after a few playful messages to see if he could guess who the voice from the past was, we connected this week in Toronto. I seem to hesitate in sharing the story with you all perhaps because I fear losing its importance by making it mundane with words. But I shall try.

I was breaking up with a boyfriend of 2 years. It was the 1970’s and we were homesteading in Prince Edward Island, living in a cabin with a grass floor covered with a Persian rug. Two goats inhabited a hut made of straw by the organic garden; it was a hippie wannabe’s delight. But the relationship was over and I was parked in a car on the dirt road in rural PEI bracing myself for the inevitable tears. The boy behind the wheel was named Paul and this story is about our connection and fate and the oddness of ships passing in the night.

I ended one relationship and moved into my future... back into the car where Paul waited patiently. My tears were of the sobbing variety, breaking up is hard to do, even if you know it’s the right thing. Paul did not say a word. He placed his hand on mine and drove straight to the beach. He opened my car door and taking my hand pulled me onto the white expanse of sand, and straight into the blue Atlantic water. As waves crashed over our heads, he kissed me.
And here is why this has remained one of the most romantic moments of my life.

He did not take his wallet out of his pocket.

He did not take off his watch.

 The message I received was, there is nothing more important than this moment.
 There is nothing as important as you.

We spent the night on the beach sleeping on the Persian rug with a bottle of Rothschild red that has never been surpassed in its velvet smoothness and juicy silk glow. Many years passed as our story later continued in Toronto, always in the middle of evolving, never finished, never truly begun.

Cut to 2012.

Thirty years have passed and he was picking me up at noon for lunch. He hadn’t changed. My body remembered the intimacy, the scent, his voice, his Irish humor, the white of his shirt against tanned skin. I am a sucker for men in white linen.  All I will say is I was more myself in his presence that I have been with anyone for a long while. I was transparent and offered information that I had previously withheld because I was protecting my vulnerability and wanting to appear cool.  I was happy to be so alive and engaged and present in myself and also to realize that the risk I was taking in being fully seen called for no response from him. I was me because I am me and a cover of defense and bravado was no longer an option.

My spirit knows his soul. He is in the midst of awakening to himself and being true to his principles. I am glad.  I am sad. But it’s a luscious kind of sad for what could have been or perhaps for what might be. I don’t know and living in the unknown is where I am most fully alive. I don’t know what this meeting is for at this time. Not really. I can play with figuring it out. Why now, what is the purpose of this intense contact at this precise moment in our evolution?  As he said, if we had met even 10 months ago he would not have understood the depth of our interaction nor even understood  the spiritual component of our conversation. Yet as we laughed and as we cried I opened and both received and radiated love that was beyond content, beyond the story, beyond outcome.

 As Kahil Gibran said “Beauty is not in the face: beauty is a light in the heart. "

And tears shine as brightly as smiles.

I am so lucky as I breathe in the whispering birch, so full….letting  my senses mark me and spin me on the tightrope of risk.

Branded by love.

Authentically Yours,

Marty

1 comment:

  1. Marty... I think these are the most beautiful, stirring, real, and authentic words you have ever posted. This is anything but mundane. You have expressed this in such a way that many will be able to feel the radiance of love. xo

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