MELODY VAUGHAN
Paying attention
And so I’m trying more than ever to mark these intermediate points between the ‘big’ seasonal shifts of the solstices and equinoxes, to help me process and really know what I am observing: that the days are getting longer, the dormant shoots are beginning to emerge, that spring is coming. That more and more people are turning towards their pain, towards the pain of other people and tending to that grief together. Paying attention, that is the quality of this time, and I recall Mary Oliver’s many poems where she reminds us that it is this focus that is the foundation of a life lived well, it is our ongoing work.
Anyone who knows me personally knows that I find February the most challenging of months. Somehow January doesn’t seem to bother me as much; I have become accustomed to releasing and submitting to my slow, hibernatory tendencies in that first month. But there’s something about the second month, with its often gloomier weather that can feel interminable, that sometimes leaves me in doubt that spring will ever come. And this year I am especially doubtful. How to believe, hope, trust that better things will emerge when so much suffering and destruction is around us?
I wonder, what needs attention in your world today?
Where does your focus need to be?
What have you been overlooking or turning from, that would benefit from your gaze?
What have you seen, that others might benefit from seeing too? How could you share that?
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