The big dog in the pen

Fear lurks inside me like a big dog locked in a pen. It is jumpy and easily threatened, snarling and biting to protect itself—it doesn’t care what it hurts in its mad dash to get out.  I can feel the destruction it causes, but it isn’t the sort of thing I can just wish away. This morning, it is still crouched there in the back yard of my mind, needing attention.

Deep breath in and out. Noticing the feeling of lack of control. Noticing the fear of pain. The fear of suffering. The fear of death. Noticing thoughts about the future. Noticing the tightness in my solar plexus. Noticing my desire to crawl back under the covers on the warm bed and curl up into a ball.

Right now in this moment, life is going on all around just the way it always has—simultaneously beautiful and terrible, joyful and painful. Every day millions of creatures are consumed by other creatures as part of the ordinary course of events. Bee mites attack bees. Tarantula hawks lay their eggs on paralyzed tarantulas. Elk tear grass out of the ground by its roots. 

And simultaneously the feathers on the cactus wren are a miracle of precision. The cabbage from the garden tastes delicious. The upland washes are carpeted with magenta owl clover. Down by the river the cottonwoods swoon green heads over its dry bed.

The virus drops me out of the “observer” position—where “nature” is something I watch “out there”—and into a fuller recognition of my participation. We are no longer strategic commanders, we are the bees, the tarantulas, the elk, and the grass. We are elegant; we are terrible. Life is precious; life is awful. There is no escape from this wrestled dichotomy—it is all wrapped up into one continuous fabric of organismic events. This time is just one time in trillions. This life is just one tiny speck in Life; the universe a shifting, endlessly-changing curtain of interconnection. Including my stomach, which is in a knot. And the fear-dog rattling its chain on its metal stake.

And in this moment, this very moment, as I just sit still—in this moment, there is this drop of consciousness, like the slightest dew drop on the end of the slightest blade of grass. A drop of consciousness so quiet I can rush right past it in my constant dash for the future or the past. A drop of consciousness as complete as a seed—a whole world inside it, lying in wait for the exact conditions when it can crack. Waiting for us to see good and bad, fear and desire for what they are. Waiting for us to touch it, even just for an instant.

We are a single note struck from a silver bell, then gone. We are a symphony banged out of a tin can, reverberating forever.

Good morning, dog. Good dog. Let’s get you something to eat...