Celestial Park, Indeed

Today I needed to clear my head. I needed to listen. I was hungry for a taste of truth. I wanted a message from God. I wanted to address my spirit, I wanted to be present for just a little while and not off in Fantasy Land (my favorite amusement park.)

I had heard about Celestial Park and with some time to kill, I went to it. I went to talk to Spirit and quiet the chatter in my head long enough to hear divinity talk to me. I wanted to walk and walk and walk, no destination in mind, except within.

Little did I know I was about to get my message alright. A few of them. I walked up to the highest point of the park, a giant human sundial. I circled the sundial seven times, breathing, breathing, nothing but me, the sky, the park, my breath. I laid under a tree and it told me secrets. It reminded me to move with the wind, stay rooted, bloom, drink the sunshine.

And then, heading down the hill, this time on the stone steps on the other side, I noticed that carved into each step were messages...

"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair."
- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

(I had been forgetting.)

"That the sky is brighter than the earth means little unless the earth itself is appreciated and enjoyed. Its beauty loved gives the right to aspire to the radiance of the sunrise and the stars."
- Helen Keller, "My Religion"

(What bliss to appreciate and enjoy the earth.)

"Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven." Rabindranath Tagore

(I'm listening, too.)

"The heavens call to you and circle around you displaying to you their splendours, and your eye goes only to the earth."
- Dante "Purgatorio"

(I was forgetting to see.)

"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces, between stars on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places."
- Robert Frost, "Desert Places"

(me too.)

"Nothing troubles me more than time and space and yet nothing troubles me less."
- Charles Lamb, "Letter to Thomas Manning"

(ah, to be everything and nothing.)

"Between the idea/ and the reality
between the motion / and the act
falls the shadow."
- TS Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

(thank you.)

I continued to walk, and then something shifted. Ideas began flooding me, spilling over faster than I could catch them. And of course, whenever I ask for guidance, Guidance shows up and says: "Write."

I went back to my car for paper and pen, and returned to document the experience. A deep peace ran through my veins: breath, paper, pen and Celestial Park, I received, I received more than I had even hoped for.

I love the way the sky opens up to meet me when I ask.

I love the way that poetry shows up everywhere, in the most surprising ways.

I love the way that I don't have to work hard, really, when I am ready to reconnect with Spirit.

All I need to do is surrender. Again and again and again.

And so I am surrendering. I am listening. I am writing. I am breathing. And I am taking notes.

(c)May 9, 2009 Lisa Ohhh