Whether it is my natural circadian rhythm or the fact that I am getting older and do not sleep as late as I once did, I find myself up and making a pot of coffee at about the same time each morning, ten minutes or so before the sun gushes like a flash flood onto my tiny balcony, full of itself. It feels like the spontaneous, contagious laughter of a child. I no longer have that same energy I once did to leap from my chair and join the revelry, at least not until after my second cup of coffee. I am in a season of my life filled less with unabashed exuberance and more with inner stillness, which, in its unique way, is every bit as exuberant and intoxicating. These mornings painted in sunlight, stroked by cool breezes, soaked with the smell of wet earth, and speckled with the chirps and trills of birdsong, hold, without judgment or analysis, all the hopes and fears of past, present, and future. As I sit, eyes closed, listening to the momentary stillness of early morning, bathed in the joy of a rising sun, I understand without thought, this, this moment, this new day like every new day, like every moment of every new day, like life, is always and everywhere an invitation to love.

I am fortunate (or blessed) to have now the time and resources to sit still, to linger, to let go of my internal to do list and open myself to this playful invitation. Yet, retirement in itself is neither a prerequisite for nor an assurance of an ability to listen and hear and be still. In much the same way, the invitation to love is not conditioned on anything or anyone. The rising sun, but not only the rising sun, the clouds, the rain, the snow, the wind, every movement and sound and taste and touch of every speck of creation – both within and without – beckons, playfully with childlike innocence, without judgment or expectation. Love. In this moment, love. The invitation is not a request for attendance. In fact, it requests nothing from me. It is as all sincere invitations should be, an act of love itself, an unconditional gift of grace.

I confess that it has taken me all sixty-one of my years to learn this truth, and, even now, steeped in my freedom to linger, to pace myself, to put down, finally, the need (although, perhaps not yet the desire) to achieve something, I lose touch throughout the day with this early morning connection to creation’s invitation. A bad mood still twists my intestines, painfully warping my perception, shattering the stillness I need to remain awake to the invitation to love. Though the traumas of my life are now, gratefully, minor, I still have the capacity and, regrettably, at times, the annoying desire to make them the center of my fascination and focus. My misperceptions, my loss of stillness happen even though, in those very moments, I am aware on some level, that what I am doing is harmful to me. It is truly a kind of insanity, momentary or otherwise.

The sun is hot now. The back of my shirt is beginning to stick to the whicker chair. The morning stillness is lifting as the industrial sounds of cars and trucks, of hammers and voices chase away the birds. It’s as if the birds know timing is everything. Why compete with the discordant noises of the human race’s seemingly insatiable need to go forth and subdue the earth, to assert dominance over something they fail to understand. Do we really fail to understand, or have we chosen, deliberately, not to listen? Even the west’s sacred text, the core of its shared narrative, warns us, entreats us. Let those who have ears to hear, it cautions. One of my professors used this line whenever he wanted to signal to those of us who had drifted off to sit up and pay attention because whatever he said next would unquestionably be on our next exam.

Creation calls to me in much the same way, my recently discovered professor.  It takes nothing more than a hike up through the spruce and aspens to the open expanse of the wildflower-explosion in the alpine meadow to hear that same call, to feel it rising from deep, deep within me.  For those who have ears to hear.  It is less a call than a sense of connectedness, a felt realization (as opposed to a thinking realization), that I vibrate with the same energy as everything around me, every tiny drop of condensation in the clouds speckling the piercing blue sky, every buzz of every bee inspecting the rolling carpet of green and red and yellow and lavender, every splash and spray of every stream, and every pebble, stone, boulder and soaring, jagged rock face puffing its chest to heaven.  Creation, I realize is not a thing.  It is an action, a force, ceaselessly, joyfully, playfully incarnating and animating existence.

Recently, Melissa and I joined a book club focused on Native American writers. I have heard in the two books we have read an invitation to love, specifically, to love the earth. I have heard less a warning or a critique and more an invitation to engage with a new narrative, which is to say, a new way of entering the sacred. Perhaps, it is time for those of us in the west to think more deeply and dispassionately about our narratives. It will require from us more than some of us may be willing to give. It is no small thing to sincerely entertain the possibility that what we believe gives our life meaning and purpose may be an illusion, may in fact have become, through misinterpretation and fear, an empty deception. I am not talking about questioning the existence of God. The idea of reducing this process of questioning and listening to a singular focus (most often defensively) on the binary question of whether God exists is to remain stuck in our western narratives. If we begin the process this way, we essentially start the dialogue by refusing to have a dialogue.

I have come to understand, with age and experience (in other words with the gift of wisdom) rather than through more traditional (and quintessentially western) empirically based pursuits of knowledge, that the process of listening begins with the process of emptying out, letting go of thoughts, desires, the need to know or to fix or to convince. Think of a child learning to dive into a swimming pool. Think of what it must take for that child to overcome every instinct and fear, to finally close her eyes and plunge headfirst into the unknown. I think it takes that kind of blind courage to step outside our narratives and entertain the possibility of others, and I believe the rewards for taking that leap of faith are immeasurable.

The garbage truck has arrived below my balcony. The crash and bang of steel on steel, the whirring hydraulics, and the nauseating smell of garbage punch me out of my interiority. It is comic (and all too necessary), this ebb and flow between the sublime and the ridiculous. What single, unchanging story could possibly and for all time express the infinite permeations of life? I hope to remain untethered to any such story, not out of judgment or criticism, but out of a need for the freedom in every changing moment to respond with authenticity and creativity to the relentless, unconditional invitation to love.