Come in from the cold

There stands, on my mantle, a lovely wooden angel with wire wings, her head tilted slightly up, her hands outstretched, not in supplication but in receptivity. She is often the last thing I see before I close my eyes in meditation, and I've often imagined myself in the same posture as I move into that receptive space.

But this morning I realized that yet another piece of what I know in my head has not yet planted itself in my heart. Because that receptive posture, charming and humble though it may be, still implies that the Divine is something that exists outside and above me. I have been, for these last few months, trudging through the cold, watching my breath, breathing in the divine spirit as if furnishing an empty cabin: I never stopped to notice the light within, never really internalized at the heart level what my head has known for some time to be true, that this space is already occupied.

Perhaps it was only this wintry darkness, this sense of having been out in the cold, that has finally allowed me to see at a deeper level that the light and peace, warmth and hope I've been longing for is already there waiting for me.