This week, one of the Spirit movements I knew was around how life ebbs and flows. We don’t live on mountaintops or in valleys; we live on the road that ascends and descends.

I was enjoying an intentional conversation with a friend when she spoke of the tides of life; sometimes everything flows into place giving us a full and rich feeling, whereas other times life energy seems to slip away leaving an empty beach, even with bits of rubbish left behind. Those ebbs and flows are as natural as the seasons. In my culture I wasn’t taught to let nature be my teacher, definitely my loss, our loss as a society. We are here on earth, in these very human bodies, yet don’t recognize that we’re interrelated to one another and to the earth. How different my life might have been if I’d been taught to let nature be a teacher. Maybe I would have found an easier way to walk through the world.  

In the past few months, I’ve known high tides and low tides, spring and summer as well as fall and winter. I’ve known times of deep clarity and connection with Divine, and other moments of human fragility and sorrow. Years ago, as I began to learn Ignatian spirituality I received the rich teaching about humility; walk gently each day seeking neither health nor sickness, riches nor poverty, fame nor ignominy; seek only the Holy One, all other aspects of life will, in the very end, pass away; seek that which is lasting.

It’s easy for most of us to savour the high tides, when heart swells with goodness, kindness and compassion. But those low tides….when I wake in the morning feeling sad, or scared or worried; when someone bumps into me emotionally and I question who I am; when rubbish from long ago surfaces again into my consciousness and I embrace it as valuable….ah to honor those times too. To be able to see low tides and the stuff that is left exposed as part of me, to accept that unacceptable side with as much care as the glistening full tidal waters…and to help others do the same. ….Ah now there is the work of a life time.

Tides, they come and they go. Walk gently not as Velcro but as a silk scarf. Whatever state you’re in now, it will pass. Spirit’s love and care will not.

Love and prayers on the journey,

Anne

Mystic in Motion

Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire

Companion on the Rivendell Way

Society Member of Shalem Institute for Contemplative Living