When you have won a gold medal what do you do next? Go for the next one. Set a goal. Make a resolution. Keep going, even in retirement. Like a retired teacher friend of mine, who, having just finished a cruise, immediately plans and books the next. Society encourages us to strive, to keep going, to achieve. To keep moving.
Yes, movement is intrinsic to life. The Spring growth around us reminds us of that. But what kind of movement? The frenetic striving for success, the chasing after things, which can be so exhausting and ultimately unsatisfying? Or something different?
Keith Kozloff, a photo journalist and essayist, was hiking in the Canadian Rockies. The mountains were majestic. Yet, what he found himself attracted to were the clouds, their ever changing shape and movement. He began to see life like that. Shifting and impermanent.
Poet Richard Skinner goes a step further:
“Do not think of a static God:
there is no static God;
only action and reaction,
activity and response,
movement and relationship,
the ceaseless flow
between you and me,
the interplay in which
all cohere….
…Do not think of God beyond
or God within
but God between;
for in the going between
is the movement of relationship,
and in that movement
there is God.”
(from Colliding With God – Wild Goose publications)
Chris Dawson