Oh these pesky pulls and pushes,
course deflections?
course corrections?
I wish I knew.
Robert Frost once said, “Freedom is
moving easy
in harness”, but
what does he know?
On this long and winding road I guess
it all depends
on who’s the harness
and who’s the horse.
-JDG
In talking with my friend Kay yesterday I spoke of how important it is for me to have someone to write to, whether it’s to those of you who read this blog from time to time or whether it’s to Abiding Presence to whom I write in letter form in my journal. Having someone to write to provides the incentive I need to write at all. Kay remarked that it seemed that my desire for contact was the incentive I needed to write. I knew immediately that she was right. Writing is a harness. My desire for contact and connection is my horse. What is your harness and what is your horse?
aholdingplace 
Janis Joplin said, “Freedom’s just another word/ For nothin’ left to lose”. For a long time, I thought that this was a pretty depressing idea- the concept that you could only be free when you’d lost everything that you value. Now I see this differently- that freedom is what you feel when you stop clinging to the fear of losing. I’m reminded of this idea often, by little things in my life. Today I wanted to get my pet rat, Edmund, out of his cage so I could play with him, but the harder I tried to pry him out, the more he struggled and squirmed and clung. Finally, frustrated, I stopped trying to force him to leave the cage, and just left the door open with my hand at the opening. A few moments later, he strolled nonchalantly into my palm, and up my arm to perch on my shoulder. I think Edmund is a very Buddhist rat, and is trying to teach me about learning to let go of willfulness and wait mindfully for what will be.
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Positive change is best accomplished when the push toward change and pull toward change are concurrent! How many of us have been pushing others toward change before they feel any internal pull toward change? Has that been very productive? How many of us have felt a pull toward change but not had any external push? How far did we get?
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What you’ve written here reminds me of St. Catherine’s School motto, which goes something like this: “What we keep we lose; it is only what we give that remains our own.” The writings on aholdingplace, to me, are like little gifts, and I can’t wait to open each one up. They allow me to feel a connection as well, and I just love that.
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