Lesson 1: Look, and Receive
Whenever I am overnight at Job’s Pond, there is consistency in the first thing I see in the morning’s light. There is Gracie the Dog at the end of the bed, standing in silent stillness looking out over the pond into the new day. She is unmoving. She is absolutely attentive to whatever might be presenting itself (or not) on the water, in the sky, across the pond. Most often she makes no assessment nor comment on what she is seeing, or smelling, or hearing. She just takes it in.
She just looks, and receives.
I am blessed to live with such a natural teacher. As smart as she proves herself to be day by day, it seems she could have the power of speech if she really wanted it. But she doesn’t need it. She teaches by example.
And every morning I get this example:
Here is a new day. There is light. There is air. There is both stillness and movement. No one knows what the day will bring and, you know what? It doesn’t really matter. It will bring what it has been created to bring. And whatever it brings (even on the days that include
death), all is embraced under the name ‘life.’ There is no need, nor any real capacity, to figure it out, to understand it before it blooms as it will. There is only the invitation, new every morning and modeled by Gracie, to look and receive.
She looks into it every morning as if it were the first and the only morning of creation. “Morning has broken, like the first morning . . . ”
Believe it. 