After an otherworldy dream last night, I was told to “follow my nose”, again. The voice spoke up at various times today – choose a different thought, a different way of responding, a different way of expressing myself; if even the slightest change in nuance, if even with just one word, and see. So I listened and did what it said.
Later in the day I was driving to pick something up, and on my way the voice said, “go that way”, so I took a detour. As I drove up the steep hill I happened upon a sign ‘Unitarian Universalist Church, this way’, so I followed the arrow on a steep right turn further up. “What a nice surprise, I didn’t know this church was out here” I thought. The gate to the driveway was open so I went through and up, just to see the view from the top of the hill. Empty parking lot of course, all doors closed as I figured, only signs of love.
Then I drove back down to the gate, and in the five minutes I’d decided to get out of my car at the church and look around, someone had closed the gate, and padlocked it. My car and I were trapped and the sun was about to start going down. I looked back up the hill towards the church and in the distance saw an elderly man, with a dog. I drove back up to him thinking “oh please let him be an employee,” in hopes he’d be able to let me out. No he was just a neighbor on a walk, he said. He didn’t notice the gate close either. He could walk around it, but no car could get out.
I was about to turn my car around to go back down to think about what I could possibly do or if there was a number to call. But before I turned, “can’t see, is your dog near my car?” as I didn’t want to risk hitting it. He said “dog? oh no, that’s a coyote, see look there he is”. I turned around and saw, very close, standing on the edge of the hill, the first and only coyote I’ve ever seen in Marin. He looked at me and, almost as fast as I got to contemplate him, then he took leave of us over the edge and out of sight. I knew then, ah, that’s why I came up here, and that’s why the gate closed me in, and that’s why that man was here; so I could see that coyote. I was freed from the iron gate ten minutes later. The how doesn’t matter.
Then I came across this poem by David Whyte:
RUNNING TO SEE THE MOON
I will become
the madman running
to see the moon
in the window,
the hawk
I saw tracing the cliff edge
above the river.
I will be the man
I have pursued all along
and finally caught.
I will be
all my intuitions
and all my desires
and then I will walk
slowly down the steps
as if dressed in white
and wade into
the water
for a second baptism.
I will be like
someone who cannot
hide their love
but
my joy will
become ordinary
and everyday
and like a lover
I will find out
exactly what it is like
to be the happiest,
the only one in creation
to really understand
how much,
I’m just
a hair’s breadth
from dying.
Lia Wilbourn 