Long Live Surrender

What strange times we live in. Strange, still and somehow, manic. Panicked, and yet when I truly look, I see surrender and clarity everywhere. From through my window, I see the sun still shining. The birds, still singing. The plants, still thriving. The wind, still breathing. In - deep. Out - deeper. From this place in my front room, I am surrounded. I am surrounded by the squeals of my toddler, restless and tiring of the four walls of home, and the billow of Stevie Nicks singing, crackling through my iPhone 7. Claustrophobic from the closeness of my family, squashed in our togetherness - forcibly pushed into the deep places within each other where the oh-so-good and the oh-so-raw live together in discord and harmony.

There are a million things that I could, or should do. There are a million plans that could be birthed. But, I know me. I'm reluctant to move an inch unless that familiar, generous presence of hope and possibility saturates the way forward. Unless that voice calls me, blaring or whispering. It's as though the innermost parts of me reverberate with an echo from the inside, and yet I'm looking forward from a vantage point that seems shrouded and in part, concealed. I will wait though, knowing that it is only the limitation of my mind that puts me here. It is only the confining push of my ways, my ideas, my ambitions and my wants that attempt to box this moment of endless possibility inside a container that it could never be so small as to fit into.

The present moment isn't phased, though. I know, in the deepest parts of myself, that it trusts in its goodness and its bottomless depth of hope. The present moment is sure in the knowledge of the impending growth that will surely come from this suffocating discomfort. I know that possibility is bolder, and the bond of love expressed, unknowingly in the united face of humanity's shared experience, is stronger. Love is the unifying force that is more persistent than my feeble attempts to have things all worked out. It is soft and loud. It is curious and satisfied. It is forward, still and backward. It, in itself is the way forward in this earth-trembling, reality shattering time we find ourselves alive in.

The dancer in me, moves. Jolty and undignified. Looking within the movement of my jagged limbs and arching feet for some semblance of release that will cause everything to feel 'real' again. I watch Sean Lew & Kaycee Rice carry their bodies into a dance - fluid, languid and precise. Together and apart, they motion, in the artful choreography of Tessandra Chavez and the lull of Låpsley's 'Station', whose beat seems to embody the moment of inbetween that we exist in at present. My heart feels something nostalgic and imminent; the possibility of expression, unhindered. As their movements evolve, their dance transfigures into something that mimics my own desire to find that raw and untouched place of authenticity as the establishment of life as we know it crumbles around me.

As I sink into nothingness, relinquishing all of myself, I hear the revelation of my truest self calling me. It wills me to give my life over, again, in submission to surrender. It reminds me that this way forward - knowing that I don't know, is the lifeblood of my being, giving me energy, excitement and purpose in its limitless possibility. As I undress my heart, discarding the blockages, the reluctance, the plans and the pride, I see that it loves to be bare and open. Breathing. The very feeling seems to be reflected in this artful photo captured by @bad_society for @thelovecleansewithlisa (a podcast and social account dedicated to redemption and rising that inspires me deeply). Though the dark, ominous and eerie landscape surrounds her so closely, the cocoon of surrender to possibility covers her with its gentleness: an ode to hope in the midst of uncertainty.

In the solidarity and comfort of our shared pandemic experience, I remember that it's not about me. It's about us. It's about the living, breathing organism of oneness that holds all of humanity together. It's about my place, and your place, and our place, and how each of us impacts the other. In this remembrance of surrender, I can breathe again, like the wind. In - deep. Out - deeper. Like the image below, I feel myself blissfully drowning, down, into a sea of endless good called love.

I am reminded, again and forever, that love is the point of everything. It all, always, comes back to love. And in love, I remember that this life is not my own. We are the same, but changing. Again. Today and tomorrow. Wholly and irrevocably. Long live surrender.