Cultivateyourlife’s Weblog

Oklahoma Rising from the Pacific

It is a beautiful Oklahoma summer morning and I am grateful to be alive. The air feels just right, clean, fresh, calm. I’m sitting outside in my little side yard. It a private Peace Garden I created last fall and I love it. The garden is full of bright perrennials, mostly native to Oklahoma. My daughter, who knows all about practically every plant, told me the proper names for each one, but I just know them by their common names like Indian Blanket, Black-eyed Susan, Lobelia, Ugly Noses (which are quite beautiful) and the like. Each variety is in full bloom.

I just returned from a group retreat in Encinitas, California around 11:00 p.m. last night. It was a wonderful trip filled with unique opportunities to practice being in the moment. The best moment of presence came with my friend I’ll call “S.”

S and I went into the ocean and jumped waves with our other friends and workshop participants, but S and I swam farther and farther out until we were past the break water. We floated like little corks, being lifted up with the ocean swells then lowered back down as they passed under us only to break into waves as they crashed onto the beach.

While we were out in the ocean floating, the lessons of surrender, letting go and becoming a part of the power of the wave force really hit home with me. When we were able to relax and trust the power of the waves, not anticipating them but knowing they would come, we were carried and supported, we became as water. We become the rise and fall of the giant swells. In the midst of the enormous expanse of blue ocean…we were nothing,yet we were everything, all of it. Resisting nothing, being like water, was a spiritual experience for me.

I was thinking about that in my Peace Garden this morning. Instead of watching early morning surfers eagerly searching for their first wave of the day, I watch the bumble bees surf the tops of my flowers, wading through wild abundance while choosing their first wave of nectar for the day.