September 18, 2023
Greetings from amidst,
I was listening to Dmitriy talk about skiing. I felt this vibration of kinship, could almost see it wavering in the air between us.
“When I was growing up in Russia, we did cross country, but I didn’t start downhill til maybe when I was forty. I am a tentative skier,” he said, with a huge smile that didn’t leave his face.
“But it is so …” he searched for the bigger explanation, “…so energizing. You are there with all these people who love where they are, and it is so positive. And you ski, and maybe have a beer, … it is fantastic.”
I haven’t skied in decades, and I am not drawn to it today, but I was swept up with Dmitriy because I recognized the passion, and that almost magical connection he felt when he was amidst other people who shared that delight. You could see the entire experience in his eyes as he talked, something more than a hobby or a distraction. Not describing a parade or a convention, but a confluence of living.
I loved hearing about this experience, along with the other adventures he shared, and I thought about it long after we said goodbye. This immersion in something positive and uplifting and meaningful, hidden inside a simple activity, that from a distance may seem something else.
It is not simply doing something with other people. It is not only being around folks who have similar interests. It is a blending of all that, a mingling of energy and history and desire and gifts and maybe the essence of our lives. A glimmer of what we were born for.
I know this connection intimately, from the beginning of nearly every marathon, where I intuitively know the paths we all took to reach that place. I feel the pain and the drive and the failures and the persistence and the sacrifice and the humility and the commitment, feel it in the air around us, see it in the eyes of the runner next to me.
It is as if some barrier is taken down that allows us to see those around us and be seen by them. And right after that, we are able to touch something that would be missed if we were not amidst it.
I think people find it in concerts, when they are singing along with the thousands of fans around them. I think it exists in church, sometimes, when the faith and grief and joy and the desire to know our Creator swirls in a mist that envelopes everyone, and each is joined in the beauty.
On Saturday I was part of an author’s event, a sort of marketplace for local authors to share their books. These kinds of things go on all the time, sponsored by libraries and bookstores and coffee shops. It is a unique environment, the culmination of sweat and sacrifice and creativity and perseverance. Because the words and ideas couldn’t be resisted these books become, and then they are attracted to where other books become.
The venue was an alley, an imperfectly perfect channel between two places, maybe once a desperate, lonely place, but somehow redeemed with color and care and it became an invitation.
At one end of the buildings, there was a farmer’s market, and at the other a busy street of shops and restaurants. In between, lining both sides of the alley, maybe twenty writers, each waiting to see if they could connect with one other person to share what they made from thin air and passion and a piece of their soul.
It was fantastic. I talked with these writers, found out what it took for them to reach this place, learned a little about the lives they had to corral to write until they got the words in a way that satisfied them, not perfect, but at a place where they couldn’t resist setting them free.
And between the banks of books there was a river of people, of living stories. Most of them I could only sense, caught of glimpse of the rest that waited to be known. But many of them I waded into, learned them, shared me. It was thrilling.
Cones of flowers and baskets of babies and oddly named dogs, and pumpkins and bouquets of brussel sprouts and boxes of plums and big cinnamon rolls and children swarming through like minnows in a shallow stream. Noise and aroma and color and life and life and life streamed between the books.
The flowing course of people, on their way to somewhere else, passed the writers who cast their words into the stream of life and life and life and netted the attention of some of those. These lives swirled in the eddies with the words and the wordsmiths and they traded magic and it was fantastic.
You may see it huddled with other skiers at the top of the next run, or picking up the detritus on the beach with others who care, or playing disc golf or singing in the choir, or rushing to get the last ferry back, or standing under a rock shelf to get out of the rain or riding alongside another cyclist who knows what it took to get this high on the mountain.
I’ve been fortunate to feel this swell of life in many places. Now I seek them out, look for the intersections where love and beauty and passion whirl together. I find it at the end of long trails, around jade-colored lakes, in crowded hospital rooms, on the decks of rolling ships, swimming along the coral reef, or sharing stories and laughing with friends I just met, who have always been my friends.
So often, the only thing that keeps me, and you, from experiencing this important part of our lives is simply walking amidst it and letting it take us where it will.
Hope this finds you wading in,
David
Copyright © 2023 David Smith
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