Oriah Mountain Dreamer: This is a heart-song in praise of the constant change...

So well-expressed...pain is there for a reason, and sometimes just to slow us down enough to get the rest and reflection we need to keep moving forward through and despite our ever-present companion, change. -PB

(be sure to read Oriah's story below, about change)

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

This is a heart-song in praise of the constant change that is part of the gift of living here on this spectacular blue-green planet.


Oh, I know- there are times when I resist or grumble about the ceaseless change within and around us. I want to cherry pick, to have certain changes that I can direct or that I pray for- like peace in the world, and patience, and immediate effective strategies for living wisely and sustainably together. Or. . .the physical strength to get my laundry done today (okay, I don't actually pray for that but it would be nice.)

And sometimes, when I am feeling spectacularly delighted or crushingly overwhelmed, I just want everything- inside me and around me- to stop for a moment, to stay the same. Sometimes I even try to make things stop and stay the same. Yeah, like that ever works!

Change just keeps on rolling.

Earlier this week my post reflected a few days of challenging pain and exhaustion. The next morning I was not as tired and the pain had subsided a little. I smiled in the darkness of my bedroom and whispered thank you to this reality we live for being one of constant change. Oh, it’s true, some days the change is not in the direction I am hoping for, but even when that is true we are reminded that change is a constant, invited to find hope in the fact that present conditions will not stay the same.

So tonight, I offer my gratitude for movement, for unfolding, for birth and death, for decay and renewal, for change in all of its manifestations. And, ironically, when I truly accept change- both that which is chosen and that which comes unbidden- I find at the centre of it all. . . . a still point. Right there, at the end of exhale, before the impulse to inhale, I find an awareness of an implicate stillness at the centre of explicit change, a Presence beneath, within, behind and surrounding this constant movement.

The flow of constant change and the ever-present stillness- both true, both blessings, both holding and moving us.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer (c) 2014

(Pic of the full moon from last night by the photographer Karen Davis. A reminder that what is full will wane, and what is diminished will, eventually wax to fullness once again.)
— with Yasin Rizvi.