Garden Reflection: Be Not Oblivious to Energy

"Be Not Oblivious to Energy" © Steve Brown, 2014

I’ve been thinking a lot about energy lately.  Perhaps I should start with a garden image.  Picture a slow, bubbling pool below dangling vines and flowers—how the last of the day’s sunlight is rippled and refracted, reflected flowers moving up and down across the waves fanning out in small metal bucket.

That is a type of energy.  A praying mantis makes its way awkwardly across a cement stepping stone until soft, natural ground cover is found.  This is another type of energy.

We tend to think energy doesn’t matter.  Light is energy.  Sound is energy.  Movement is energy.  Stillness is energy.  We are energy.

I’ve become more aware of energy.  For over a month an infection has been living, breathing, working inside me.  Nothing serious, but painful enough to sit down and listen to—often I bowed to its iron grasp.  It seems the antibiotics are finally getting the upper hand—and that too is energy.

We cannot control everything that moves inside us.  We probably should not even try.  A passing sadness may open a new window of understanding.  A moment of giddiness may allow someone into our life that was previously shut out by our walls of protection.

But neither should we be oblivious to energy.  We need not subject ourselves to harm mindlessly.  We do not dance in front of an x-ray machine at a disco just to show off what’s moving inside.

But I wonder if we sometimes don’t do just that—spiritually speaking.  Is what our spirit needs and what we are feeding it in line—or do we feed our spirits not only empty calories, but carcinogens?

When I was younger, I wanted to experience the world wide-open.  I was shy, quiet, guarded— but I put myself in different venues—from strip clubs to poetry readings, behind fast food counters to university classrooms, from the cardboard shanty towns on the outskirts of Juarez to the occasional weekend at a million dollar mansion.  I hoped being in the right place would somehow end my loneliness and isolation.  Perhaps a stripper would take a shine to me.  Perhaps a line of poetry would give me a glimpse into heaven.  Maybe I’d find God in the reflection of a hamburger spatula.

I was searching, but the thing is, I’d never spent enough time analyzing energy. 

It is out there:  dark, sticky.  It is out there: subtly sliding from silver to gray to blue and finally so black you find yourself walking around in your very own personal void.  It is also out there—yellow, gold, white.  It is out also out there--soft spoken, quiet, smiling understanding across the rippling waters of shadow and light that is the self.

The right energy can make a month of pain, not only endurable, but in an inexplicable way, peaceful, as one draws closer to his creator to cope with what otherwise would be unbearable.

But one must choose which energy to let in, which energy to walk away from.  It is a choice, but a choice that must be made.  You cannot subject yourself to darkness and come out unscathed.

Voices are all around.  Energy abounds.

Which of these will I allow to know me well tomorrow?

Temptations.  Fears.  Jealousies.  Doubts.  Humor.  Sympathy.  Divine love.

I hope I choose wisely.

Somebody stepped inside your soul
Somebody stepped inside your soul
Little by little they robbed and stole
Till someone else was in control

--Bono, U2