Love the Common Miracles
“I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched,” the late Peter Matthiessen wrote in The Snow Leopard, an account of his trip to the Himalaya in 1973 with the biologist George Schaller. “The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence, the requiem birds, the mythic beasts, the flags, great horns, and old carved stones, the rough-hewn Tartars in their braids and homespun boots, the silver ice in the black river, the Kang, the Crystal Mountain. Also, I love the common miracles–the murmur of my friends at evening, the clay fires of smudgy juniper, the coarse dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time: when I take my blue tin cup into my hand, that is all I do. We have had no news of modern times since late September, and will have none until December, and gradually my mind has cleared itself, and wind and sun pour through my head, as through a bell. Though we talk little here, I am never lonely, I am returned to myself.
Having got here at last, I do not wish to leave the Crystal Mountain. I am in pain about it, truly, so much that I have to smile, or I might weep.”
I have had some of the same feelings coming down out of mountains. I had some yesterday, when I re-read The Snow Leopard. Having retreated to the bedroom, to read and sleep, for what turned into most of a day off, I was hoping to ward off a cold and wanted to be a good patient. I was somewhere in the middle of the book, immersed, feeding my soul, when I got up and made the mistake of briefly checking for emails or texts on my cell phone. It was so intrusive I regretted it, instantly, as if a glass had shattered.
Then I decided to take out the dog we’re watching for a quick afternoon walk and as soon as I rounded the corner onto the street there were suddenly just enough cars turning and people moving and bright sunlight to complete the assault on my spirit. So lost had I been in this meditation, I almost couldn’t handle it. Some time was needed to get back to that space, even in this little riverside neighborhood far removed from the grandeur of the mountains described in the book.
Matthiessen wrote “I seem to have lost all resilience, not to mention sense of humor–can this be dread of the return to lowland life?…I remembered how careful one must be not to talk too much, or move abruptly, after a silent week of Zen retreat, and also the precarious coming down from highs on the hallucinogens; it is crucial to emerge gradually from such a chrysalis, drying new wings in the sun’s quiet, like a butterfly, to avoid a sudden tearing of the spirit.”
Blessedly, I did get back to my meditative space, finished the book, sewed up the little tear in my spirit, and was glad for the reminder of how fragile that bubble can be and how necessary it is.
This season can be a time of renewal, I see that more clearly than ever, as we celebrate light and the slow turn of the planet and the common miracles Peter Matthiessen loved. We need to guard that space, though, zealously and unapologetically. Corazon Aquino’s advice relates here–Keep inviolate an area of light and peace within you.
