More on presence

I was thinking more about presence Saturday, riding the bus with my son to the Fremont parade – watching the people get on the bus, listening to the boy behind us telling his parents about his plans. I was wearing clothes that were tighter than I’ve sometimes worn – living into my being, pushing out with my presence into the world. I saw other people living this way, too – being present, not hiding behind their clothes. Couples with kids and strollers they muscled up the stairs; single people; friends; people of all ages. The bus stopped often in the suburban neighborhood, and I had given up worrying about arriving on time. I figured the time we arrived would be right.

My son was slouched deep in his seat reading a book. I was watching everyone else. And this is what I thought to them: your presence is welcome. I felt a bit like I was just waking up from a long bad dream, and was teaching myself, again, what’s real. I thought of how, actually, no permission is needed to be fully present. You don’t have to be the right shape to be allowed to be seen. You don’t need the right credentials to be allowed to look at someone and smile. You don’t need to wait for permission to speak. You don’t have to already know the other people to appreciate them. And they don’t need to fit into any molds to be worthy of acceptance. There, with all the signs of who they are that they allow to show, all the choices they’ve grasped as signs of their identity, all the inside parts they maybe didn’t hide because they didn’t know were showing – there they are, welcome.

I tell myself again: my being is not based on absence. The goodness of my body is not based on the absence of pounds. My peace is not based on the absence of stress. My smile and eye contact are not based on a lack of inhibition. They are my presence, and presence is what I am.

I wondered what odd stamp of the world had made me at times think otherwise. Was it that I learned my kindergarten lessons too well – sit cross-legged on the rug, face the teacher, don’t speak unless given permission and only reply with the answer asked for? But in kindergarten I already had a disapproving judgment of the girl who sat under the piano (not like everyone else) and said, “just call me Nina,” instead of just saying her name. And I already had the sense that cats and dogs are enemies, and that enemies form the essential structure for a good story, and that good and bad define each other.

I broke myself away from those musings, for the line they lead in doesn’t lead to this new wakefulness, which I love. I recall that even then I was a dreamy, light-filled spirit who would lose myself in the pumping of the backyard swing, singing out songs that caught at my heart. This dwelling in absence is a story that I can put on all parts of my life, up to and including now, or I can let it all go and dwell in presence.

This is very important to me. I want to hold each one in my spirit’s embrace and say, welcome – your presence is appreciated. It is good, it is allowed. I don’t want to look through the old frame where I felt people were to be appreciated if they matched standards – if they looked right and dressed right and didn’t have bad habits, and lived within all of society’s painted lines. And I believe this is the paradigm shift that Jesus was talking about when he said, “a new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another,” and when he said “judge not, that ye be not judged.” I think I am now only in the surface layers of it. There is such depth to love – it’s able to go down to the very foundations of being. I sense that it’s able to change everything, to wake everything up to the harmony of universal presence, to heal everything. It is my deepest desire to participate in it.