Tag: unity

White Noise

Posted on by Amy Palleson

This morning I felt it. As I sometimes do. I woke up early before the world to see the quiet, and the cool stillness.  Nature–the Great Mother–was baring herself to the unconditional acceptance of the sky and falling back into the wonder of itself. And I paused on my front porch while my soul connected to the place of it’s true home, devoid of the white noise of people and air conditioners and cars and flurry and chaos.  And as the sun rested in self-assured imminence behind mountains which stand guard like new parents, felt called into remembrance, that at every turn, nature—The Earth—will impassively stand in non-judgment of our human drama and flaws until we either save ourselves or perish.

And the indifference of it didn’t make me feel small; it made me feel reverent.

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Many different leaves

Posted on by Amy Palleson

And it’s morning, and I’m walking Kora in downtown Salt Lake City, close to the big temple.

It’s the last two days I’m sitting for her family because they’re moving to Park City so I am feeling that—saying goodbye to Kora as well as Twix and Breezy—and confronting the dynamic nature of life and the beauty inherent in the savoring of something knowing in advance that it won’t last.

And the trees are half-in and half-out of Fall—some with green foliage attached— and the leaves that are on the ground are not yet soggy almost as if the night is still hanging on to summer.

And people are always friendly down here. As they walk to their service work for the LDS church they wear name badges, and in suits and dresses, stiffly hold hands with their spouse of 30 years. In unwavering focus on their perceived devotion to God, they float Softly within a padded existence of religion, giving hearty good mornings to strangers because that’s protocol, and act out devotion, playing into the substance of the “Vast Other” through small talk and worlds external to their own vulnerable emotional spaces. She’s “happy”; he’s “happy”; and heavenly father walks with them in their union, like two human beings dictated into existence, floating by in an Elder Smith nametag and flowered rayon skirt like paper dolls astride the knowing silence of immeasurable potential that is (to me) the deeper experience known as God.

And inside my own (often) bubbling, frothy mental space this morning it’s becoming more clear than ever that two disparate truths can coexist. That these religious people and my self and Kora are living a unified whole.

Because on this morning of balancing between seasons, the leaves pull aside summer with such grace it becomes a seduction, and walking beside sterile couples searching for an experience of anything but, I’m inside my life with even more ferocity. For walking a path of meaningful togetherness is fertile for revelations of self when nametagged people (futilely labeling limitlessness) are the seasons of humanity bearing leaves of different growth. Where resting into a morning is a synchronicity in which we’re all just fragments of a larger creation breathing itself into being.�

And in the sight of such blending, I can see my depths more clearly, for we do not have to understand the truths of another to become more whole because of them. And so it is that from sterility and vastness, goodbyes and protocol, on a fall morning, I walk beside the seasons, like a Summer giving itself constantly to Autumn.

 

Her baby

Posted on by Amy Palleson

December 17, 2016

As I was driving to a pet sit this morning–in the frigid air–I passed a bus stop on 5th East and saw a woman of smaller stature all bundled up with backpack holding a plastic doll the size of a real baby.

While waiting for my light, I stared at her–at first, just trying to figure out if it was a real baby, then after realizing it wasn’t, wanting to join her experience for a moment, to see if she was okay; if she was hopeful or despairing; what the story was; just to be with her for a minute before I had to drive off–and as I did, I saw her look at the baby adoringly, and snuggle it to her, then watched as she gave it quick little playful kisses under its purple, fleece, hooded onesie, as if she was trying to distract it from how cold and boring it was to be waiting out there in the air for the bus.

I just…..This world. Sweet and beautiful and amazing, and filled with surprises, because I didn’t feel sorry for her. The only thing I could think of was “Good for her.” Look at her loving that thing. Look at her unashamed and coping.

I don’t know.

Because in a life filled with trauma and a bevy of unhealthy behaviors–a world where people with mental issues can’t get help and heroin use often begins as self-medication–holding a baby doll at a bus stop and giving it loving kisses in full sight of a judgmental world seems infinitely more functional than trying to appear like you’re perfectly “normal”, nothings ever wrong, then going home to binge on shame, anger, and heroin.

Anyways, my prayers go to all those suffering with trauma and mental health issues who are unable to get help and find effective coping skills; my prayers also go to the rest of us, that we can help be a source for healing where it’s possible to do so, even if that means not pointing and scoffing at the older lady standing in the cold kissing the face of her plastic baby doll.

[This was so intense when it happened last year and seemed like I’d always remember it and yet I didn’t; it popped up on the memories on my old FB profile and I had to read it all the way through to even get the mental image of where exactly I’d seen her and what that moment looked like. Brrr. It was so cold that day, I stepped right back into that part of it, then she came in and the baby, which I don’t emphasize enough the size of but the proportions were interesting because the woman was so petite and the baby doll the size of an actual few month old baby. I originally posted it with that Circa video of the Mannequin Challenge for a heroin overdose which is so powerful but left it off this because I think they compete rather than complement.]