“No plan” and “No word” and, it seems, “No one else”. These past couple of years I have had more solitude than not. Quite a bit different from having children at home: soccer games, open houses, and family dinners at night. Quiet aloneness. Well, except for the two cats and two dogs, who provoke giggles and curses and some cleaning up. I had dreamed of having all this time to myself.
“Still though, think about this, / This great pull in us / To connect.” This line from Hafiz’s poem, “With That Moon Language”, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, has often been with me in this past week. We are drawn to each other. The connection feels good. Sometimes that other can push us to more than we ever dreamed, like the spin class instructor urging to dig in and keep
pedaling hard. And sometimes the many can create much more than the one. A look at a beehive shows how that works. Then there is the touch of another that helps calm and relax—both the one reaching out and the other who gets.
“This great pull in us / To connect.” A fine, Lenten crack slowly branches and spreads
in the shell of my hermit life. 