Yesterday an owl swooped past my window and perched on a low branch near our house for several minutes. I’d never seen one so close and relaxed. I felt we had a conversation.
By now our daily life in isolation has settled into routine and the owl’s surprising visit was the highlight of my otherwise routine day. What’s your routine, in general? Mine is intermittent tasks sprinkled with small pleasures, phone and internet communications, lots of in-depth reading of the news, lots of stillness. I have very few ‘have-tos’ and ‘shoulds’. But I’m seeing that by losing my freedom to go out, I’m experiencing an inner freedom to find my own, deeply personal, daily rhythms. What are some of yours? Do they center around meals or family? Or work obligations, deadlines, virtual meetings? Can you let your own natural rhythm rise up from within and guide your natural inclinations—maybe for reading a novel early in the morning, or hiking into the dusk, or exploring the attic, or sleeping at noon.
Last week, I was feeling the surprise of early spring flowers—they appear in their own time, with their own rhythm of the seasons and the turning of the year. We could overlook their smallness and insignificance. We could mutter to ourselves, “There they are again,” and move on. Or we could be amazed. We could give an awed intake of breath and lean over to drink in their color. We could see the flight of a bird in our peripheral vision and discover a friendly owl right outside our window, in the middle of the day. Seeing everything in new ways can also become part our daily rhythm, when we allow it: routine, surprise, and stillness, over and over and over.