Since Sunday, my wife and I have focused all our attention on caring for our energetic, brilliant, and delightful two-year-old granddaughter. She is all that a two-year-old can be! But in recent days, it’s remarkable how clear it is that she senses the fear and insecurities of change in the air.
And indeed, she now has a new baby sister! The two sisters saw each other, touched each other, met each other for the first time yesterday — when baby sister was still less than a day old. My mind’s eye sees a lifetime of playing, fighting, holding each other up, and a deep, everlasting bond.
These days, baby and both parents rest and recover in the same hospital room until it’s time to come home. I can imagine it’s a precious and unique time of intimate bonding as mother recovers, father takes care of diaper changes and helps with other needs, and baby adjusts to a new world requiring breathing, generating warmth, feeding, pooping, and peeing.
I did have a welcome break today — a chance to walk through Duke Gardens on my way home after a doctor’s appointment at Duke Clinic. The scene around the pond caught my eye. At first I was drawn to the young couple, quietly communing with Mother Nature, and then the turtle on a rock, his neighbor having just slipped off from her last attempt to sit by his side. In the distance I could hear the gleeful laughter and exclamations of joy from the children as ducks flew by and landed on the opposite shore.
Moments such as stopping by the pond at Duke Gardens are good medicine. And it is good for practicing detachment, when it is relatively doable. Most moments are different; they’re as it were, Mary and Martha moments. Let’s just say I’m always Martha! Something Important, Something Critical is calling my attention and I miss seeing the Divine. It may be preparing a meal for a hungry family and finding myself nowhere near as skillful as my wife in distracting and re-directing a toddler, or pressure to complete this task or get to that task before a perceived deadline, or it may be simply waiting in traffic and not being where I want to be.
And it happens so quickly, the polar flip from the idyllic morning soaking in the Divine Beauty of Duke Gardens to the more common Mary and Martha moment. Read how Meister Eckhart speaks of this to his novices.
Take heed how you can have [the Divine] as the object of your thoughts whether you are [communing with Nature, the Divine, the Mystery] or [in solitude]. Preserve and carry with you that same disposition when you are in crowds and in uproar and in unlikeness.
Meister Eckhart, Counsel 6
I don’t wish uproar and unlikeness today for any of us, but we will certainly experience it. But maybe once or twice I’ll remember to practice; practice even then!
