Pause

I have been thinking about pause points. Actually, I've been living them. This past week's vacation was itself a hiatus from the usual activities of life. It was also a time to practice the art of pausing, and to do so frequently during my more leisurely days.

Vacation comes from the Latin vacare, which means unoccupied. And so, though I had things that needed and wanted doing, I also quite intentionally allowed myself moments of idleness when I disengaged from productivity and accomplishment.

While kayaking on sweet, pristine, little North Lake, I took my paddle from the water as we drifted along the shoreline, marveling at small trees seeming to grow directly out of rocks, or at least from pockets of soil that had settled into their crevices.

I dropped into stillness amid COVID tensions to seek the best path forward, one that allowed me to disagree respectfully and honor our interconnectedness as we walk this road together.

As the backyard echoed with the indignant squawks of fledging magpies, I stopped to rejoice in the survival of eggs threatened weeks earlier by a raven. I also laughed as magpie parents insisted just as raucously that their young could now feed themselves.

I stilled in the midst of creating a collage, while cooking, when zooming with friends who live far away, as the sun set and as it rose, while I lifted weights and did yoga, all in addition to periods of sitting meditation. And in pausing, my soul was fed.

Yes, pausing feeds the soul. Not only is it a venerable spiritual practice, but one could assert, quite rightly it seems to me, that pausing is the only spiritual practice, though it comes in numerous forms and with many applications.

As I wonder about that, I remember a Krista Tippett interview in which the poet Naomi Shihab Nye shared the Japanese concept of yutori, which she translated as spaciousness. Nye tells us that yutori is, "a kind of living with spaciousness...(such as) leaving early enough to get somewhere so that...when you get there, you have time to look around."

We are often so very busy, so focused on our individual concerns, that our attention collapses and we ignore the vastness of All That Is. Pausing allows us to reverse that process. In pausing, we are better able to open and to receive. When we avail ourselves of yutori's encouragement "to look around", we can access at least a smidge of that which lies beyond, or perhaps that which ever hums deep within the surface particulars of our lives.

A key to what that might be can be found in the numerous reports of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), such as those shared by Pueblo poet Margaret Honton in her new book Dream Encounters, A Memoir Based on One Woman's Dreams over a Period of 50 Years. Not only is this book an in-depth primer on how to mine the nuggets that often pass unnoticed within our dreams, but in a chapter entitled Beyond All Boundaries, Honton briefly refers to her NDE that occurred as a result of a car accident in 1990.

"I experienced a state of vastness," she writes, "that exceeded all previous conceptualizing. Infinity was no longer a concept but a reality and it was suffused with Infinite Love...not a place but a state of being--without boundaries, yet all-embracing."

While it is rare for earthbound beings to fully experience that dimension while we are doing our work and our play in this one, there is something about that realm that is infinitely (pun intended) compelling. Therefore, we practice pausing so that we might open to it.

We meditate and we pray. We engage in artwork where the creativity at the very heart of life can more easily find us. We immerse ourselves in nature, and study sacred writings which, to paraphrase the Buddha, are not the Moon itself, but wise fingers pointing our way there. And we love. Pausing in these ways and many others, with intention and a willingness to experience what lies beyond and within our lives, is a holy act, one that provides nourishment for souls that otherwise become famished.

Buddhist psychologist Tara Brach encourages us to practice the sacred pause, and promises that blessings will arise "when we step out of our incessant mental and physical activity and reconnect with the being-qualities of presence, wisdom and love."

May blessings such as these find you this day. And may you welcome these being-qualities, delight in them, and pass them readily and lovingly on to those around you.

Blessings here and blessings there. Blessings, blessings everywhere.

Leia