OUTWAITING CLOUDS

“The bud in half-bloom outwits the cloud.”
~ Anonymous

Some days I wake with a cloud around my heart, and it dulls everything except the weight I carry deep inside. Yet, just because I can’ t make it to the light today doesn’t mean that the light has vanished. In truth, the heart, like the Earth, is continually blanketed by ever-changing atmospheres that come and go between who we are and how we live our days.

So faith, it seems, can be defined as the effort to believe in light when we’re covered by clouds, and though it feels like the sun will never come again, the truth is it has never stopped burning its light. In fact, its heat and warmth is burning steadily, right now, on the far side of whatever cloud we are under.

If we could only suspend our judgement when clouded in the heart. For many skepticisms are born from conclusions drawn while unable to see, as if any kind of understanding will prevent the clouds from coming or going, again and again.

But no cloud lasts forever. The Earth and all that grows from it knows this well. So does the heart and everything that grows from it, in spite of all our very understandable pains.

~ Sit outside, when you can, and watch the clouds come and go.

~ Breathe slowly and evenly, and feel the sky open and close above you.

~ Note how the trees and flowers do not collapse when the clouds roll in.

~ Draw strength from this.

The Book of Awakening

~ Mark Nepo