Solitude, when consciously chosen as a spiritual practice, contains a perfection that brings a sense of balance to one's inner life. As I settled into my solitary desert retreat this past Friday through Monday, the silence of the landscape became a mirror in which I could see my own inner workings more clearly. One of the things I discovered - since my father's death a day earlier lay fresh on my mind - was the fact that the difficulties we had relating to one another in recent years (due to his becoming increasingly more fundamentalist in his spiritual vision and me becoming more expansive in mine) stemmed from the fact that I remembered him so differently during my growing-up years. It was he who had taught me to question things intensely, to trust my own mind in ferreting out truth, and to maintain a sense of playfulness about life. Now, with his passing, I realize that those earlier qualities - so different than the fundamentalism he embraced later in life - are not just memories. They live on in me - in my behavior and attitudes - and thus acquire a kind of reality they otherwise would not have.
Photo: Gambel Oak leaf floating in a sandstone pothole; Canyonlands National Park, UT; December 30, 2013
If you'd like to make a donation to help fund Nature Photo-Quotes, please go here. Thanks!
No comments:
Post a Comment