We’ve just passed the winter solstice. It’s dark. Still, we all know the next stop will be spring. The path is clear, but we’re tired and the way seems very long. We also know the turn to spring will not be a solid stop. From there we’ll proceed to summer, through autumn, back to winter. All we have for sure is change.

No one has been able to say the singular thing about change that makes it finally ok. Now and then change seems great. But we tend to remember when it’s not so. So, all in all, there’s a pretty generalized resistance.

Whole political agendas, whole religious doctrines, whole technological advancements are established on the rationale of control – of minimizing change. Surely, we can select and manage circumstances we want against those we don’t. Surely what each of us would change or retain is of highest value and therefore ought to be agreed to by everyone.

But change and our inescapable vulnerability to it keep being right here. As poet David Whyte suggests, the fact of your being born – your incarnation – leaves no perfect choice other than to “simply be here with life’s fierce need to change you.”   

Outside unpredictability, we can never know certainly what is next. And we can find no one who does. No wonder we feel lonely, desperate, lost.

But in reality, we are not alone in this. Lonely – yes and too often – but not alone.

The fact is, we are nature itself. We are as much of the Earth as any other thing we see here. As much as mountains or tortoises or tulips or mayflies – as much as raindrops dancing their way down our window panes. But no more. We are not more than nature – even with our capacity for thought, for speaking, writing or reading words. Every bit of that capacity is possible, and thus expressive of nature.

Check it out for yourself. Maybe instead of “nature” you prefer to speak of God’s hand – of the Creator – or even of physics. Still, at the core of it, every being is interdependent with every other. Directly or indirectly, we all need the being of everything to live. And this: each and every being becomes incarnate, exists for a bit, and passes away – into and out of the mystery that renews itself in seasons, in years, in universes. In our interdependence and our finitude, we make up the world – together – today.

Still, feelings of being lost have nipped at my consciousness a good bit in recent days. Part holidays – the over starched expectations for perfection built in since childhood. But also, part grief at the loss mid-month of my dear friend Tod Sloan. The memories of him behaving as memories do at times like these – mined for the good and joyous, the undeniably laudable; irritated only at how early he’s gone.

I can imagine a conversation with him. Woven into and through its fabric would be strands of psychology and philosophy, of social justice seasoned perfectly to our tastes with personal anguish and resolve. Its conclusion: Yes, Tod deserves the great appreciation of each memory winging his way. So will each of us. So do we. Right now.

This is how we can become found when we are lost. Or, at least, less troubled by the state of not knowing exactly where we are.

Try this. Recognize and admit to yourselves your value here in the ecosystem of all life. And, if that’s too challenging for now, recall the good and generous, the gifts embodied in people you know. Tell them about it if you are able. Each entirely unique, each belonging exactly where she or he is, where they are.

Years ago, in woods of the Pacific Northwest where my friend Tod most certainly walked, a poet listened to an Elder tell a teaching story of his Native American tribe (records don’t indicate which one of the 57+ tribes in that region). The non-Native poet did his best to share the story as he could.

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

David Wagoner, now 92 ½. He was half his age when he was found by this teaching. Now so are we, found again by the forest – by the companion who’s been with us every step we’ve taken.