Inner Tremble

I'm always blown away by how wrong I am…How inadequately I preconceive. 

In Africa I expected to find a certain energy, a spectacular sun dance, magic on the surface of everything, a lightness and unprecedented illumination. That is what I would bring home and share with my community. I expected to be strengthened by the great sun and mighty fauna. I expected incredible warmth. 

What I found, though, was cold, subterranean, mystical, deep. The wildness of the animals, their stories of fight, the scars on their faces, the sparseness of the prickly greenery, the way the cold seeped in as the sun sank down, and the hugeness of the night sky. These weren't necessarily the bright and easy answer-bringers I had hoped for. Rather, these things stirred questions, some of which, incredibly complex. Why such problems within our planetary home? What will you bring to the table? What is the real culprit? What is the real answer?

It is usually “place” that gives me transcendental comfort and answers, rather than human systems or thought. But, the girdling force between the wildness of the landscape, the vastness of our problems, and the battleground in my mind was, this time, a person and the beauty of her philosophy. Dr. Marker’s impenetrable optimism along with the indubitable curriculum vitae of CCF, provided the path of hope toward the success and actability of the answer… which always, always proves to be love.

Africa, you did not yet provide the all-out sun dance that I thought would tie everything together for me in a great box of healing. What you provided was a sense that the grit that has been necessary so far, is something that must not relent. But, also the strengthened sense that beauty is well worth the battle that still must be fought, that the battle will be in fact be won, that the world is both wild and hard and moves to an unrelenting and dazzling deep inner polyphony with voices that click in unified roars of hope… that the dance begins with passion, gains momentum, and the best of it is yet to come.