A Narrow Line

We’re looking for the music
In a music box.
Tearing it to pieces,
Trying to find the song.

— Sara Groves, “Fireflies and Songs”

A few weeks into my academic quarter, I’m feeling a bit up and down. Classes are going well, but once a week I have a night class which is playing havoc on my sleep schedule. It’s making me more than a little irritable.

The therapy program begins again today. Adding this thread to the weft brings challenges, and time constraints narrow my options, but it is for a short duration and it makes the finished piece much more vibrant.

There is wonder
To be found lurking
In the smallest places.
It is all around, it permeates
Right now.

It’s occurred to me recently that I spend a lot of time folding and unfolding things. Blankets, shirts, towels, you name it. It’s such a simple act, but there’s much to be found.

I’m brought back to a conversation I had with a monastic last Spring as we were cleaning the dorm rooms at the end of a retreat. There’s a tidiness to the monastery that’s hard to describe. It’s not obsessive, but it aims at a state of readiness. The kitchen is tidy, waiting for the next meal to be cooked. The dorm is tidy, waiting for the next group of guests. There is a strong sense of receptiveness; it waits to receive the unknown.

As such, the folding of blankets is approached with a thought to their future unfolding. There are folds that require a good deal of disentangling, and others that allow the blanket to essentially unfurl, ready for action. Some folds allow the blanket to show it’s best shape, and others toss corners about willy-nilly. The way you fold affects the way you unfold, the way you approach unfolding.

There’s always more to be learned about folding and unfolding, always a further state of receptiveness waiting just beyond the horizon.

This is the deepest secret to its living water: it transforms every obstruction into a new expression of itself. It accepts as a channel what is presented as barrier. The mountain does not stand in the way of the spring; it is the way of the spring.

— James P. Carse, Breakfast at the Victory