Breakthroughs
When I was little, I often sneaked out and ran up to the farmer's field behind our house to hide inside the tall grass. Then there was a breakthrough, and this scene became my whole world. I was surrounded by the yellowish blades, the sun and clouds above, and the sound of the horses shifting behind the fence not too far away. Inside this secret place, I would imagine that one of the horses -- the dark one -- was mine. I saw the pictures in the clouds -- an old man smoking a pipe, a caterpillar, a slide, a spoon, some ducks. The tall grass whipped about me, tickling my arms, legs, nose, cheeks, and the blue dress that I wore as my "uniform," because in it, I forgot about my depression, my self hatred, and all of the ugly things. In these moments, I felt small, and yet somehow I knew that I was part of something larger, something I couldn't even understand.
I still don't understand, but today I call that feeling my higher power.
Shakespeare and countless others have suggested this notion: all things divine rest within the mystery itself. He compared our God connections to the mystery between two musical notes -- the strange way they work together to form a chord -- and he ended his comedies with music, a celebration of the great question, a feat that artists repeatedly try to capture. But we can't ever harness this tangible divine being completely, because the force is untouchable, as far as I know.
It seems that it's out of our grasp as long as we are living.
And maybe we'll never know what lies beyond. Maybe we'll never see or touch a spirit, but I have a hard time believing that music, art, love, and soul connections come from nothing and end in nothing.
In later years, in the evenings, I felt this same freedom at the farms where I worked as a horse trainer. Before I went home, I'd climb up on the fence and stare out into the field for a while, and suddenly, there I was again -- that little girl in the blue dress, feeling connected with all that was behind me and all that circled around me. When I breathed in the wind, it was the same wind I felt as a little girl, and the air was more than air; it was a close, moving friend that lifted me up.
And I remember one night in the Nevada desert when I stumbled upon a Native American gathering, and they welcomed me in, and we all danced around the night fire until the sun began to rise again. How I smiled and shivered. I felt the peace there too...or...if you will...I felt the god in all things.
These days, I see it in hawks. I watch them glide. My ears have tuned in to their sound -- a scream, a piercing call, one like no other. Sometimes I feel it in the trees, when I watch them move, when I notice the way that some trunks look like faces, or hands reaching, or knobby knees, and I remember what it's like to express naked feelings and come alive to someone near.
I believe that divine scenes change for me, and perhaps they change for all of us. Some days, I can see it in everything around me. Other days I'm caught up, or more than caught up -- distressed, mute, and overwhelmed. But when I walk through the uncomfortable nature of things (which I often despise, it seems), I come to the other side, and again, I become that little girl in the blue dress, one having a breakthrough, one wishing on true love or licorice.
I have to remember that whatever I'm going through, if I keep on pressing, there is another side, and within that breakthrough rests the stuff of daydreams, when the whole world could balance on one blade of sun-kissed grass. And that dark horse? I did indeed have one of my own later, and he was magnificent.
Hang in there. The breakthrough is coming. Because the spirit always circles back. Always.
C.A. MacConnell
