I'm going to share a piece of my heart with you. Coming back to the place in this picture was sacred to me, in a way I didn't realize it would be until I was in the car on the way there, for something completely different.
My grandparents used to bring me here to fish and picnic almost every week when I was small. It's been just over a year since my Gramp passed, and just over four years since my Gram passed. I went and stood where we used to stand with our poles, and watched another grandfather with his own grandchild fish just down the line. "Be careful," he said, "there are big rocks right there. don't get snagged."
Don't get snagged.
My grandparents always told me to stay in my own business, and not to get caught up in what everyone else had going on. Just yesterday I gave my own father the same advice. At the time I thought they were telling me not to advocate for myself. But in that moment, standing on the shore, I thought, maybe they were just trying to protect me from what they knew I wouldn't be able to change, no matter how hard I tried. And I tried. And tried. And tried. But like all lessons, I had to learn it on my own, didn't I?
And as I was standing there, watching this grandfather continue the tradition, I heard an acoustic guitar, and turned to see a man sweetly strumming away at a picnic table. I smiled and nodded, and so did he. I watched his kids amble about, scolding each other about nothing important, weaving in and out of the cattails.
A snapshot of many lives crossing, all on their own paths, all with their own mistakes to make, all with their own healing to do.
And yet we all intersect in these moments, for just a moment, to form a web of energy and pain and humanity - a pattern of sacred geometry that's so mundane, it makes you notice.
