Yesterday, I walked with a friend near the edge of the Ohio River. The looping path allows for talking without thinking about crosswalks, corners, and cars. A man, dressed in black with a full, gray beard, walked in the opposite direction from us. He could have been a Santa Claus but for the Roman Collar around his neck and the rosary in his thick fingers. Until seeing the collar, I would have guessed him a father of a different sort. Perhaps a grandfather.
We find ourselves in a place of great chaos. Grasping for answers to serious questions. Grappling with emotions from anger to joy, sadness to panic, hurt to confidence, strength to weakness. We are caught behind the veil of online connections, when we are starved for human touch.
The Santa Claus priest had blues eyes that softened each time we passed. When he was out of earshot, I told my friend about experiences that others recounted in the lead up to the election on November 3rd. Horror stories of spiritual leaders using their pulpits to bully people. We shook our heads and decried this behavior. But then the man would come close again, his lips moving with his prayers. Something inside of me softened, because I could not look away from his eyes.
As we move into the darkness of an already dark year, I am aware that there are planetary shifts going on. I am not an astrologer but have been told that the darkness, the chaos of this time, is aligning with planetary shifts from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. Hope fills me with this new thought that perhaps in the mess of life we are living, there may be a passage to something new and bright.
Today, I am willing to find solace in the current that flows to lessen the struggle for solutions to bring us through to some new light. A change is coming. I feel it because I am no longer bent on proof but feel compelled to look people in the eye without hatred.
Will I change your opinion about what is fake or real, whether you can attain the unreachable, or even that I’m right and you’re wrong? It doesn’t really matter at this point, not to me.
But if I can look in your eyes with compassion and set aside my own animosity, perhaps this little corner of the world, the one I can change will be just a bit brighter.
Share your story with me by visiting my website, tinaneyer.com, or through the Conscious Living Center site. I’d love to connect with you. In 2021, my class and coaching offerings will be online until we can safely gather once again.