Digging a hole to plant some purslane, I found a penny, old, worn, thin, dirty. I rinsed it in the kitchen sink and squinted, then took a picture I could enlarge. 1982. I was 18. Graduated from high school that May, then off to college in August. Feeling grown, feeling alone, feeling hopeful. The world ahead bloated with possibility.
If I hadn’t planted the purslane, the penny might have remained buried for years or longer, much longer, until it aged into a relic from a time no one would remember.
Like this time will one day be – the demons and the dangers and the demagogues of this era rubbed thin and rusted and hard to even read. Buried. Spent. Their bloated possibilities nothing but history, nothing but the dirt-caked bones of a time no one will know.
My father had been a star athlete in high school, and his coulda-woulda-beens came out in the form of teaching me the games as we watched on our black-and-white TV, then the color TV, then cable. Because of him, I could spot a foul before the whistle blew and confidently yell at the screen when the refs so obviously got it wrong.
He taught me basketball, baseball, and football. With those transferrable skills, I picked up on hockey, golf, tennis, and soccer with relative ease.
Then, at some point in my early 30s, I stopped watching all of it. It didn’t happen all at once. I started to become concerned about the potential brain injuries in football. I became increasingly sensitive to the angry atmospheres of basketball arenas and hockey rinks. I began to see championships as exercises in futility followed immediately by the 0-0 record reset. What was the point? So, gradually, I stepped away from sports completely.
I blamed my spiritual journey. A world of win-loss competitiveness didn’t seem compatible with non-duality. And the inability to endure the vitriol of a live game atmosphere seemed to share DNA with the hours I had accumulated spent in meditation. I had evolved, and athletics were clearly happening on the level of base materialism.
Then the world started to fall apart. One Trump term, a worldwide pandemic, a second Trump term, a direct attack on DEI, a gross lack of compassion, an entire generation of social security recipients facing a fear they never imagined, . . . the list is endless, it seems. I can’t hide under a rock and ignore it, but my sanity can’t take a steady drip of horrible news. I can’t meditate 24 hours a day, but I also can’t survive engaging in life in continually demoralizing ways.
And then I turned on a basketball game.
For a couple of hours, I focused solely on the Memphis Grizzlies. The understanding of the game instilled in me by my father returned with gusto. Most importantly, I was 100% PRESENT. I was in the moment. The very brass ring I reached for in meditation was the free gift of sportsball.
So I’ve filled out not one, but four NCAA tournament brackets — two each for the women’s and the men’s tournaments. I’m taking my wife to her first live NBA game in a couple of weeks. I’m a proud supporter of the basketball, baseball, and softball teams at the community college where I work. And I’m already excited about Vandy football this fall.
I am once again a sports fan. Who meditates. A double-header.
There is a Goddess who lives in my Essence, the landlord of my heart. She offers communion, grace, peace, and mercy, and I want those gifts more than anything.
More than anything? Yes, more than anything. I know that I know that I know this is true.
But the goddess sits on a small stool in a corner, present but quiet, infinite but cramped, shoulders hunched over, arms wrapped around her knees,
Is this enlightenment? The Divine lives within. I know it. I recognize her. There she is. Her presence is undeniable. I have this awareness.
I visit her often. I sit with her, offer her food, pray to her, sing for her, chant her name, light a candle so she can see, light incense to give her pleasure. But she just sits there, patiently, as if she has all the time in the world. She doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t seem to be upset. She sometimes even smiles at my offering. But, mostly, she just sits.
I, however, am impatient. I get frustrated. I get angry. I abandon my prayers and chants. They start to feel futile. I leave her alone for long stretches of time. If she is just going to sit there, I’ve got better things to do.
When I come back, (I always come back) she is there, on the stool.
I throw up my hands. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to dance with you,” she says.
“I’m ready! Let’s dance, for heaven’s sake!”
“Look.” She motions around the space of my heart.
It’s as if her single word turned on the lights. I see boxes piled high, thousands of them, floor to ceiling, stacks and stacks. How is it I never noticed there is hardly room to walk?
“What is all this?” I ask.
Again she says, “Look,” more softly this time.
The boxes are labeled. Work. Relationship. Past relationships. Political Ideology. Upcoming Vacation. Expectations. Pride. Hurt feelings. Things I love. Things I hate.Traffic. Money.
The largest boxes have the most specific labels. The Sense of Rejection When Not Cast in That Play. Guilt About the Girl in Tenth Grade When You Sided With Her Bullies. Victimhood about Never Being Paid What You’re Worth. Family Dynamics since the Pandemic. And one just called: First marriage.
I turn to the goddess. “These are . . .”
She nods. “Attachments.”
I sigh out loud and figure I might as well get started, so I roll up my sleeves and open the first box. When the goddess stands, I’m so startled that I stop and look at her.
“What are you doing?” She asks.
“Figuring out what needs to go and what needs to stay.”
“It all must go.”
“All of it? But I might need this Work box, and I want to keep the Upcoming Vacation box, for sure.”
The Goddess sits back on the stool and rests her elbows on her knees, chin in her hands. The look on her face says it all. There will be no dancing today.
“C’mon,” I plead. “Surely you can’t expect me to get rid of all of this. This is my entire life. This is my story. This is who I am. Some of these boxes hold great loves, achievements, happy memories, great times to come.”
“None of that is here. These boxes hold the ropes that connect you to the memories, hopes, desires, expectations, likes, and dislikes regarding what is on the labels. And the ropes have to go.”
“What about this one?” I pick up a huge box labeled Spiritual Journey. “Surely this one gets to stay.”
The Goddess chuckles. “That one especially needs to go. Listen carefully. You’re not releasing the journey; you’re releasing your attachment to the journey. Don’t you see? No exceptions. Not one attachment can remain.”
“Not one?” I ask.
The Goddess stands again and walks to me. She puts her hands on my face, like a mother to a child, and whispers, “Do you want to dance with me?”
The power of her touch surges through my being. In that instant, I know that giving her the space to move freely through my essence is worth more than all of these boxes a million times over. I know it is my greatest desire to make my heart her home. And I know that the path to peace is found in complete surrender.
“I want nothing but to dance with you,” I say.
The Goddess smiles. “Turn around.”
I turn and look. Emptiness. Beautiful emptiness. I feel light and empty and full, so very full of love and joy and peace. I lost nothing. I gained everything. And for the first time, I know what freedom is.
I turn back around. The Goddess is already dancing, her golden white dress shimmering in the uncovered light of my surrendered heart.
Spring cleaning has me in the darkest corner of the sunroom with a stick in hand, wrapping old webs around the far end like drab cotton candy.
The spiders staked their claim last fall, orb-weavers, I think. I didn’t get too close, and nights were longer and cooler and spent indoors, so I let them have the corner.
When I reclaim it on a warm May day, the abandoned webs cling listlessly to wall and screen and bench and reach as if alive for the oar I offer from a far shore.
The weaver of the orb mustn’t mind rebuilding her home. It seems to be the point, to start again from the beginning.
The cardinal builds a new nest every year, sometimes even twice. Moles burrow constantly and don’t use the same tunnel again.
The hostas in my front yard disappear completely each winter and always come back, from a tiny green peek through the dirt to a maturity even grander than before, fueled by energy both fresh and remembered.
Everything starts over. Life is not always added to. It is sometimes begun anew.
Deb Moore 