Rosemerry, once again you have reminded me of something essential. I don’t need to bend into the world. I am most effective in absorbing the world when I invite it to bend into me. The world comes to me when I am receptive, accepting, hugging the world around me. I am most a part of it when I am inviting.
By invitation, I allow plants, animals, rocks, people, stars to become part of me. I don’t have to bend, I have to do nothing but be receptive and I absorb whatever I am aware of. All I have to do is accept, and the world becomes part of me. The world is my invitee, and it comes to me by my letting go and allowing it to approach. It becomes a loving part of me by invitation.
The invitation is most effective when I have no concept of what is before me. I am most inviting when I put aside all formed perceptions of what I experience. I do not know what I am inviting, so the world can come as it is. This applies must acutely to people. People feel the invitation most clearly when I have no notion of who they are, when I am open to them just as they are. My invitation to them has no specified name or address.
Presenting this open invitation is mostly how I walk through my garden in the morning. In a short while, I often begin conjuring up my expectations and my preconceptions about my garden. But my garden is most a part of me when I walk through it with an open invitation, when I am most receptive to my garden just as it is.