Roger Housden, in Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living, sees trains very differently. He sees a train ride as a place to let go of cares, and to muse.
He writes of a woman, Veronica Goodhill. She took a year to do nothing "except read novels, take extensive aromatherapy baths, surrender into dreams, and roam (for hours at a time) the hills surrounding my parents' old farmhouse in the wild and remote west of England."
She continues:
"On this extended solitary walkabout, I tried to let all identities dissolve, becoming nothing and no one in particular. It was as if the personas and roles of my life receded in their definitions, in such a way that I became a human being - a woman - first, and in a sense, only that ... I needed to see what my life depended on when there was nothing left to hold me. In what great mystery was I held, if any at all? Could I really let go? Could I surrender, and fall into Life? Fall into the Great Below? ..."
"Learning to slow down, to stand still, rather than anxiously moving on as if the world depended on my actions seems unbearable to my human form that in some ways has not yet borne itself. Neither acting nor retreating, I bear tension and paradox, in an in-between state - the place between God's and Adam's fingers in Michelangelo's depiction of Creation ... This ability, in this moment, to withstand, tolerate, the whole of who we are, dark and light, consciously, seems to relieve God and substantiate us."
Veronica's words remind me of the chemo experience, and help me to better understand this transition time. I was so tightly cocooned, and, then, .... and now. I love the image of living in "the place between God's and Adam's fingers in Michelangelo's depiction of creation."
Roger quotes William Stafford.
What can anyone give you greater
than now,
Starting here, right in this room,
when you turn around?
I set even more intention to live, knowing this to be so!
