waiting and watching

She Abides

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

Several years ago, my youngest sister gifted me with a large wall-handing made of weathered wood and carved with a feather and the word abide. I had a sense of what abide meant, but I wanted to be sure, so I looked up the meaning. Merriam-Webster provided me with several options:

a: to bear patiently : tolerate

b: to endure without yielding : withstand

c: to wait for : await

Today, I find myself again reflecting on the word abide and it perfectly describes where I find myself at this stage of my personal journey, especially in relationship to the outside world.

Today, I abide. I sit in quiet observation of the unfolding of humanity’s journey – knowing there is nothing I can do to change that which I find intolerable – things like hatred, division, and all the various isms. I endure the horrors I watch unfolding while refusing to yield my inner peace to things outside of my control and turning to my inner practice when the violence and hatred becomes too much for my sensitive nature.  I wait in hope that this time, humanity will get it right, while knowing they may not, and preparing myself for the worst.

Being able to abide requires a certain measure of inner strength and wisdom. Wisdom wrought through years of seeking and failing to facilitate change in the tide of humanity’s fate. Strength gained through the multitude of rejections I have faced along the way. Humanity doesn’t care much for change-makers. The institutions who benefit from the status quo, welcome change-makers even less.

Abiding doesn’t mean I’m giving up my visionary gifts or the impulse to support the healing and transformation of humanity. Abiding simply recognizes that now may not be the time.

So, I wait. I wait and watch. I hold on to hope without clinging to expectations. I have stepped aside, providing space in which humanity can walk its journey without interference or distractions. I abide in the contentment and peace I have so diligently cultivated awaiting the moment my gifts might be welcome, knowing they may never be. I abide in the reminder that the only one I can save is myself while providing an example that others may one day choose for themselves – and that the choice is up to them.

Waiting and Watching

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

The current universe energies are weird. According to my astrologer friends, this week is supposed to be the worst of the year. Strangely, I’m experiencing just the opposite. “The worst week” for me were the two previous weeks – where my personal energy felt very volatile, fragile, vulnerable, highly emotional, disproportionately reactionary, and I did not feel like myself at all! 

Yes, the energies this week are strange. I’ve felt disturbances in the force. I’ve felt underlying anxieties and fears.  I had the sensation of “something wicked this way comes.”  AND, I suffered the heartbreak of learning that someone I care about might be racist, transphobic, and xenophobic (among other things).

And yet, even with all of this, I still feel a strange sense of calm. It’s a kind of “waiting and watching” calm. The calm before the storm? Perhaps.

Tuesday evening, I experienced a visitation of sorts in my dreams. The only way I can describe the visitation was that of a teacher – male in appearance and distinctly dark complected with dark (almost black) hair. In the dream, there were no words exchanged, only a deep gaze – as if into my soul, and through that gaze, I felt learning being imparted to me. It felt like a download of information and knowledge. There was nothing specific within the download or identifiable, just the sensation of being filled up with a kind of ineffable flow of energetic substance. I woke up with the dream fresh in my mind along with the sense of having been prepared or being prepared for……something. This download “continued” throughout the day and was experienced as physical sensations of energy moving down through my body. I had the sense of this being the integration of what I “learned.”

I have no idea of what I learned. There are no words to give to it. It simply felt like necessary preparation for that which I do not and may never know or understand.

So now I wait. I wait and watch as humanity continues along its current trajectory. There are so many things at the tipping point – and in any moment the whole house of cards might collapse upon itself.  AND there’s nothing I can or need to do to hasten it along or prevent its coming. All I can do is wait and watch – an objective witness to whatever the collective decides to do with what God has given them and with the catastrophe they have created for themselves.