In the Middle of a Life

The title of this blog entry was also the title for the sermon I went to today at the Port Townsend Unitarian Universalist Church.  if you get the chance, I would recommend visiting this church, especially on a sunny day.  The mix of sun and wood and warmth was a comforting atmosphere for me today.  As I sat in the sun-filled sanctuary and listened to the readings that fit so beautifully into the sermon I was filled with a peace that I had been wishing for for the past few weeks.  Rev. Bode spoke about making room to learn from the past, live in the moment, and prepare for the future all while gaining meaning from the life you are creating.  At this point in my life I am struggling to find a balance of learning from the past and "planning" out a future while I am enjoying so much of the life I am immersed in right now.

Three poems were used as readings during the sermon.  The first, entitled "The Man in the Yard" by Howard Nelson, and was about a regret a man had that was over a simple un-taken action, but one that he frequently dwelled on.  I know I have these thoughts, too.  What would have happened had I stayed on the path I was so in love with a few years ago?  A few years is a long time, but that was the last time I had any real semblance of what I was going to "do with my life."  I have learned a great deal from the choices I have made and in the long run do not regret the big things.  However, there are the small things, encounters and exchanges with people, things said, thoughtless actions taken, that are those things included in the "If I could change a few things from my past" list.

And then there are the moments I feel lost as to what my next steps will be.  In this job I am lucky in that I know pretty well what I'll be doing from now until July, but after that things are up in the air at this point.  I catch myself listing some of the possibilities in my head all the time: stay for another year of AmeriCorps; apply, get accepted, and go to grad school somewhere; try out a different type of job; get TESOL certified and go teach English somewhere on this great big earth; move to Chicago with Kath; ???.  So then I follow up on some of these ideas.  Search idealist.org to see what jobs have been listed recently.  Download and start applications to different schools.  When I get too caught up in these thoughts, though, I miss what's going on in front of me.  No surprise.  In the second poem, "A Maxim" by Carl Dennis, the author writes of planning for the future and living life like this is your last day, but not so much that the delights and delightful people in everyday life get ignored or pushed to the wayside.  Like looking up on my walk today and seeing this:

Mount Baker from Fort Worden State Park

So if looking back into the past and thinking about what you could have done differently AND looking ahead to the future both yield lacking results, what is a person to do?  More specifically in my ego-centric atmosphere, what am I to do?  Do I hop back and forth, from past memories to future dreams, and hope that in between those hops I see and experience some of what's going on right now?  According to Barbara Cooker, quite simply, yes.  In the poem "In the Middle" she writes:

...Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging

us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,

sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh

of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up

in love, running out of time.

So I guess I do the best I can.  Find those moments I can spend in the hammock, acknowledging the beauty around me, while also fully aware of incorporating lessons learned and future plans that occupy the mind.  Try to hop back and forth less and swing in the hammock more.  I felt like a normal being after hearing that so many others struggle with this same past, present, future conundrum.  We're all in this boat together, literally, so let's make the best of our time and do our best to learn from our mistakes so we can become better people for each other.  So that we find ways to avoid hurting people as we have done in the past, so that we can make a difference in our worlds right now, and so that we may be proud of  who we will be in the future.