Thursday, February 24, 2011

A Day of Thoughtful Contemplation


This day is one of quiet contemplation for me. Recently I have lost the friendship of two people I have known for years, not because we have had an argument, but because of my standing in integrity for what is right for me and acting when I believe it is essential to take action (or not). The realization for me is that we can never really fully know what is in the mind and heart of another person. We go through life believing that we understand and really know the hearts and minds of others, but these little things leave me with the realization that the human mind and spirit is a very complex mechanism, and that there are many levels of understanding. Some things perhaps we will never really know or understand. A small example is this quilt I made awhile back, "Spirit Calling Me."  If we were all given an assignment to create a quilt with a tree, how many of you believe that YOUR quilt would be vastly different from the tree quilt I have created?  And yet, we all accept that we understand and know totally the meaning of the word, "Tree."  This is one of my favorite pieces I have made, perhaps because it is a very spiritual quilt for me.  I am very involved with trying to fully understand and act in harmony with the spiritual side of life, and again, this word means something different for each of us depending on our culture and our country and even how we were raised. Perhaps there is no right way or wrong way; there is just what is and that is very different for each of us.  But because of this difference, and because people are unable to just accept that as being the way the universe was meant to be, we end up with broken friendships and relationships, and on the larger scale, we have wars.
If you have a broken friendship in your life, look at ways you might mend the fence today. Friendships are part of the garden of life. We have to learn how to fertilize and otherwise maintain them, and how when the garden gets disrupted together, how to try to determine the causes and find ways to make them a viable part of the garden once again. I know for me, every single friendship I have is there because I need it to grow and develop in my life. Even when sometimes it seems that it is a friendship I don't need, there is something in me that needs that friendship - some unresolved part of myself that needs to come into balance and harmony. A friend is a mirror of my own soul, and whatever I see in my friend that I don't like, I am seeing in my own being.

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