Companions

I have no companion but Love, no beginning, no end, no dawn.

Rumi

To be alone is to be a companion to oneself.

Here we are, collectively alone with the world, forced to honour the micro moments of life– to attend to the present. As always. To sink into the reality that nothing more is known than what we can do right now. Right here. Here.

The apricot haze of the sunset. The smooth rounds of a snail shell. The rainbow mist illuminating a watered garden.

For many of us, nature has become a closer companion– a sanctuary of relief, reflection and relationship. For me, nature has been the bestower of gifts, providing the raw materials for transformation. Petals ask to be arranged. Leaves ask to be layered. The beings who come forth have always been there, waiting for me to remember what I so often prefer to forget.

People ask me how I’ve conjured up these companions, when the truth is, I feel they’ve conjured me up.

Some say I should keep them intact– glue or tie them down. Commit them to permanency. The truth of this work, though, is becoming intimate with impermanence.

These beloved companions do not disappear when the shells are swept away.

Their dance does not die when the leaves shrivel up.

Their song is not silenced when the flowers fade.

They return. They return to us all.

They are captured for a brief moment, mid-magic– like a pebble tossed into a lake. We witness the rippling on the silk of the water, and feel the resonance hit deep within our beings. And then, the pebble sinks beneath the surface.

Our companions return to the unseen.

The place where possibility lies.

They remind us that we are *still* here.

Every branch, bud, and stem has a story of us swirling in it.