Standing together in Divine embrace

After a week of uncharacteristically blue skies (and the biting cold that comes with them) I awoke this morning to gray and clouds and drizzle -- so much more typical for the Pacific Northwest in winter -- and though I still have this nasty cold, some part of me has relaxed and softened into acceptance; the resistance is gone.

Which reminds me once again of how much of the discomfort in our lives is not in what happens to us, but in our reactions to it. The cold weather is so much harder to bear when we stiffen ourselves against it; the pain -- whether physical or psychological -- affects so much more of our bodies when we tighten up in response.

But how can we resist that temptation? It's so natural, to push away what we designate as bad or uncomfortable. Perhaps the way to open and soften is not just to tell ourselves to open and soften, but to re-label that which we find so threatening; to redefine, to welcome, or perhaps just to accept.

In the end, whatever it is we're dealing with -- a pain or sickness, a loss, a struggle, or just the holiday blahs --well, it is what it is. Resisting it will not make it go away, so why not choose to stand with it, like these trees in the forest; allowing the light to touch you both; accepting the briers and grasses which caress and irritate you both; feeling the coolness of the forest which surrounds you both.

And as the rain takes on strength and begins to thrum lightly against the skylight above my stairs, I find myself thinking of Matthew 5:45 --

In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.

Somehow, in our constant labeling of things as good and not-good, me and not-me, we begin to be cut off from that all-embracing quality of the Divine. Perhaps it is acceptance that will bring us back to the comfort of the fold.