Come In Close
from Upstream, by Mary Oliver
Occasionally I lean forward and gaze into the water. The water of a pond is a mirror of roughness and honesty—it gives back not only my own gaze, but the nimbus of the world trailing into the pictures on all sides. The swallows, singing a little as they fly back and forth across the pond, are flying therefore over my shoulders and through my hair. A turtle passes slowly across the muddy bottom, touching my cheekbone. If at this moment I heard a clock ticking, would I remember what it was, what it signified?
During this week’s yoga class I offered students a moment to still themselves, center their scattered senses so that they might become ground in which the work of the practice and of the present moment could be planted into them.
The work we were engaged in for this class was slow, quiet work, providing subtle yet potentially powerful shifts.
This work asks us, I told them, to still ourselves first and move our attention close in. The slow, subtleties ask us to be curious, and curiosity is cultivated up close. That goes for everything I think. From a plant in nature to a practice in our individual bodies, or the practice of being in community with our fellow beings, curiosity allows us to witness the subtleties, the slow yet potentially powerful shifts when we come in close.