Saturday, October 3, 2015

Experiencing a Frog

I sit holding a dear flattened frog someone ran over on busy Charlotte Avenue. It may be a land dwelling toad yet with the rain we've had a frog could have made its way from the nearby greenway and creek.


 Initially I walked past it while returning to my car, yet as I opened the car door, a voice inside me said, 'You do know you just walked past a dead frog?' I turned around, picked it up to bring home with me.

I hold it and hear ribbits. I recall playing leap frog as a kid and wonder if children still do that these days? I'm reminded of tadpoles swimming in the creek of my childhood, a creek that no longer exists due to bulldozing.

And then the boy at Cheekwood one Thursday at dusk comes to mind. He announced to his young peers that he was the king of the world about to kill a frog as a periodic deep croak sounded from the small ponds bull frogs call home. Fortunately his plans never came to pass.

Earlier today, I held a board from one of my waterlogged appliances after Nashville's 2010 flood. I've been unable to put it in the trash. I see it and think if minds can do this surely we can house and feed everyone on Earth. Doing so takes heart and mind engaged.

The frog engages my heart and mind. I hold it and ponder how it is I find Nature's dead or dying ones.

Some people would value the intricacies of the board from my appliance over the intricacies of the frog. When I get scared as to the drastic diminishing of Nature on Earth, I want to shout from the roof tops that Nature was here long before technology and that Nature is imbued with an aliveness not found in this laptop on which I write.

My soul is fed by Nature, art, and music. I wonder if technology can feed one's soul or does it satisfy a mental quest that at times feels out of control. Take for example the recent story I heard on drones eventually delivering pizza. I go to Pizza Perfect and get take out pizza but if I had it delivered I would want a flesh and blood person knocking at my door and not a drone or robot.

I ponder these things and for the first time in over five years of keeping this electrical board, I turn it over and see a maze of Life's many paths.

This earth-walk holds many paths. What matters most to me is that I am on my path.

How do I experience being on my path really? I have a sense of being at home within my body. I am present, not in my head thinking 'what's next?' or what to fear but present and aware of a resonance that is deeply calm and centered...like now as I hold the frog.

In the quiet, I hear: Just honor me. Hold me in your palm. Let me feel your love and gratitude. Then lay me to rest under the fern fronds so what's left of this physical form can become one with your garden sanctuary and return to Mother Earth.

In this moment, people around the world are suffering, hungry, cold, homeless, dying or about to be like this animal suddenly killed. I wish for them a palm in which they and those who love them feel held.

For now, I will take what remains of the frog and do as it asks. Right now that seems even more fitting as rain falls and I realize as I hold the frog one last time, it appears to dance.

How do you experience being "at home" within? 
How do you experience being on your path? 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 3 Oct. 2015