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A brief triad from a weekend workshop on spiritual possibility and growth: “Wait, listen, don’t run away”. The breakout group that came up with this piece of wisdom laughed when it emerged, recognizing themselves in it. My impatience, obliviousness and fear sabotage so many spiritual gifts before I can even receive them. I resist the very opportunity I’ve asked for, or turn — run — away from it. Maybe it arrives decked out in dirty clothes — one whiff and I wrinkle my nose in disgust. Or it slinks in all shifty-eyed and lurky, then lounges at the bar, hitting on attractive patrons of both genders, when I expected elegance, grace, tact, self-restraint. Or — just to reveal how contrary I’ve become — it clearly exudes all those things and I’m bored already, longing for excitement, surprise, mystery. But if I can’t even recognize what I asked for when it lands on my doorstep, how can I receive it and work with it?
“Wait, listen, don’t run away” (WLDRA) counsels me that human time is just a subset of a larger cycle. A different pace might open doors — or let me see those already open before I speed past. Or if I really have to keep moving, let me at least pay attention. Salamander in a vernal pool today, creeping toward a patch of sun. Wait and listen on a day like today “when the world is mud-luscious” as e e cummings describes it in his poem “in Just-.” It gets easier, when the world begins to answer that patience. Not always. Just enough to keep me trying. Enough that surprise can still fill me like sap. I feel it all up and down my nerves and joints and sinews, sticky-sweet.
“Don’t run away (yet).” Sometimes it’s not fear that shoves me off, but a weariness with the same-old that drives me out of doors and away. And one second later, after my back is turned and I’m off to the next new thing, there it stands behind me, a little breathless, waiting — like I could have been — partner, companion, familiar other, element of the universe just my size, carved out of the vast flows of energy by my need and calling. And do I welcome it? Do I even see it at all? Ah, friend of so many missed chances yourself, you know the answer. I do not. But I could. Can, the next time. “Wait, listen, don’t run away.”
(Bard-crazy, I play with that abbreviation WLDRA. Trying to pronounce it, it comes out wooldruh, almost like wuldor, the Old English word for “glory.” Wuldra gehwa “each of (the) glories” — and I’m off in words. Conjure them and they will appear. The word, the thing it names. If I wait, listen, and manage, this time, to stay put long enough to witness and welcome and wonder at what comes.)
A Druid Way 