Knowing

You know when you sit with someone and hand them a gift, and you watch so softly but intently as your friend opens the gift and his or her eyes equally soft and intent wondering what they hold in their hands. The knower and the knowing unopened. Those  flashing moments just before the gift is opened, exploding like a sprout emerging from the soil.  The sprout cresting the earth to see the sun for the first time knowing, always knowing even in its shell, that the sun surely exists...and then to greet its knowing.

An odd night last night, giggle. When I took my little dog outside I could feel the wind. The sky was filled with dark night clouds. Checked the weather and saw thunderstorms coming. As I was saying good night to my hobbit house, the lights turned off, I heard a banging and the garage door, pushed by the wind trying to move the rock keeping it in place. I went outside to see if I could secure the garage door better and caught the force of the wind in my face, but was not so much the wind I felt as the dust. As I lay in bed, even my little dog seemed vigilant, unsure, and would not settle down. Usually with winds like that you hear the wind. Not last night. Did not hear the wind. You only heard the thud and banging of who knows what ... I will have to wait until the sun rises this morning to see.

I lay there listening and was carried back to my first memory of the Gulf's waves at night on a cloudy night without the moon. Sitting in darkness you hear the roar of the waves, the splash, the swooosh of the water lapping up on the shore, pulling back and crashing softly into the new rivers flowing in. You could not see the waves. You could not see the sand. You only saw darkness. And in the darkness you heard the waves. That sound is woven deep into my soul and even my body, it is tangible, palpable. I've listened to wave sounds thinking they would bring that same feeling, but for some reason they do not. Oh yes, comforting and make me smile, but it is not the same. It is not just the hearing, it is the power, the energy, the motion of waves in the air crashing upon you that creates the tapestry woven. Like the wind last night that could not be heard save for the motion of waves in the air crashing upon objects outside.

And so I ponder...is that the same experience of the seed? The knowing. Is there sound when the earth is moved with roots digging down and when the sprout pushes through? Is there sound we cannot hear...unless we listen to the breath of the earth carrying the whispers "Come and greet your knowing."