Paper Airplanes
For the past two years, I have been attending Wisdom’s
Way School of spiritual direction. This past Sunday I graduated from the
program. The following is a musing about some of the results of this 2-year
journey.
As our children have gotten
older, family meals have gotten progressively more infrequent. Our once
predictable nightly meal has given way to a variety of combinations of people at
the dinner table. And sadly, at times, dinner takes place in the car running
from one practice or activity to another.
Early this spring was one of
those uncommon evenings when the stars aligned and all of us Lowes happened to
be home for dinner and strangely no one had anywhere to be after our meal. The
food was simple, probably something frozen from Costco. The kitchen table was
strewn with multiplication flash cards, children’s homework and remnants of
that morning’s cereal. Nevertheless, dinner was served.
We are a family of six and
when we sit down together there is never a dull or quiet moment. Each of us
talked about our day. There was a jovial mood around the table that evening.
Laughter and joking helped to lift me out of my funk from the workday.
I noticed a box sitting on a
bench near the kitchen table. It was a kit of origami paper with an instruction
book on how to make paper airplanes. I asked one of the kids to pass the box
and proclaimed that I could make an awesome
paper airplane. Small, square papers were handed around.
Rob and I have different
styles regarding how to fold a plane and we each jostled each other into a
competition of sorts. The kids gleefully joined in. And after some instruction
on proper engineering, I was surrounded by bits of folded, colorful paper
flying past my head. I looked around the table and each of my wonderful
children was with me, showing up as their true selves and being perfectly
present in that moment.
This is what a spiritual life
is about. Being able to notice those moments that might otherwise seem mundane
and experience the profound otherness in them.
For me this is where God is
found.
The last two years in Wisdom
School has given me is the ability to step outside of my narrow expectations
and to see the vastness of what is real and important in any given moment. I
have been allowed to join others in their journeys and have been witness to
what it is to be truly human and in turn have experienced a capacity for
compassion I have never felt before.
The Wisdom School has helped
to make me brave and to venture out and bring other seekers together in our
monthly soul group. I continue to be in awe at the love and vulnerability that
flows during our soul circle gatherings. This amazing group of women has just
clicked in the most marvelous of ways and I think that click we hear is a
divine click. The universe telling us that it is good.
One of my mentors always
checks in on me and asks, “Are you having fun?” At first I thought this was a
glib question but now I know it is one of the most important of all spiritual
questions. Because without fun there would be no divine clicking, or the joy of humanness and by no means would
there be any paper airplanes.
