The world we live in seems more disconnected and fragmented by the day. We each have our own separate house, our own private car, a job that defines us, and all these things like what clothes we wear, who we hang out with, and what shows we watch, which seem to define us. And yet, none of these things is who we really are. None of these things point at all to who or what we really are, and the more we identify with these external things, the lonelier we inevitably feel because as we identify more and more with outside things, the less we feed and nourish that piece of us which is our truest self, that piece of us which is unchanging and which, in its essence, is connected to all of life.

Stewardship is not about control, but it is about boundaries; not the riding and punishing boundaries that we learned in the educational system, but the uncompromising, yet ever-fluxing boundaries like those of the river-bank. The boundaries of the river bank are non-negotiable, and demand respect, yet they are forever fluctuating and never the same even from one day to the next. So too it is with our own personal boundaries, and it is our personal boundaries that we must start with if we are going to be good neighbors and if we are going to tend (never mind simply not be the cause of devastating harm to) the earth. Stewardship is a form of navigation: navigating the fluxing tides of boundaries including one’s own, those in one’s community, as well as the limits and boundaries of the other creatures and natural world to which we belong as one essential part of a whole.

We, like the river bank, are ever changing. Our preferences, tastes, style, job, relationships, hang-outs, friends, favorite things, etc, are shifting. Our physical bodies change, age, grow fat or thin, get pale or tan. Our emotions and feelings change.

This change is consistent with the first of two laws o the universe. The first is: the only constant is change. The second is: everything that is true is a paradox.

The paradox is that, while we work so hard to get to know ourselves, our preferences, our likes and dislikes, and who we think we are, the truth of who we are is both unchanging and, ultimately, undefinable. Poets and philosophers, seekers and mystics have been describing the unchaining part of the Self for millennia, and yet it remains as illusive as it ever was: a feeling and a knowing rather than a definition in the dictionary, a something greater that we touch upon in those still moments, in the flash of a shooting star or the babble of the river hitting up against the edge of the bank.

It is in these moments of stillness, of stripping ourselves down of our preferences and identities, of even our bodies which are but cloaks are will also change and eventually fade, that we begin to contact the Self. It is in the moments of quiet and aloneness, that we begin to connect to our Self and to something greater than ourselves. It is in these moments of aloneness, that that painful loneliness we inherited from an outwardly oriented and grasping society, begins to fade and transform from loneliness, to aloneness, to connection to all things.

Today, I invite you to allow yourself to be alone. It may be a cherished moment, a beloved experience, and it may be challenging, scary, or painful. I invite you to receive the invitation being offered to you from your Self. To sit with yourself and have a cup of tea, and just listen to that inner voice, without judgment, without offering solution. Allow. Listen. Feel. What arises in the silence when you are truly still with yourself?

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