The Knotted Places

It seems warmer than usual for mid-May as I walk the gravel trail near our home. Moms and kids play nearby and I wind my way through a canopy of trees. Wind brushes against my neck, laughter tagging along and I exhale. I whisper prayers, the words coming to mind without much thought. Gravel crunching underfoot, a father and his daughter wave as they ride by on their bikes. I cross the road toward the lake.

I walk to the edge of the lake, where a great egret is making its way along the shoreline, feasting as it goes. Birds fly low along the surface of the lake and I track one for nearly 100 yards before I lose it against the trees. Water lilies blanket the shoreline with a few flowers about to open and in the distance, families dot the pier, fishing and eating ice cream from the nearby truck.

I sit at a nearby picnic table and when I look up, see the lighted cross on the far side of the river. Tucked in among the pines, it was built by our local Quaker community. I had forgotten it was there and smile at the “church” they’ve welcomed me into – this landscape shaped by time and tide, my body at home in its rhythms.

The father and his daughter ride by again. I pass the peace with a smile and a quick wave. I think about all the years and events and grief that have landed me here, on this shoreline on a muggy evening in May. I confess the day’s cares, along with my longing for a clear direction and destination.

An essay I read years before comes to mind. I've been carrying its image with me lately. The author, Barbara Young, a psychotherapist and photographer, wrote about an imaginal filament, “as sturdy as a silken spider’s cable, along which each of us walks through life.” When pain and tragedy arrive, the filament breaks, she wrote. To get past the pain, we tie the broken filament into knots, but are then stuck at the knot.

I think of this often, the knotted places in our lives—yours and mine—where we've simply tied a knot, whether as children or as adults. We do this so we can keep going, mostly to feel in control, and appear some version of steady, able and competent. It’s a genius solution.

I think about all of this, about my life's filament and its knots. When I first read this essay, I thought "oh, what a great metaphor." But that was before this knot and that knot and, oh yes, that one too. That was when things were simple. I reflect on the knots. Some I finally figured out how to step over. I'm no longer stuck, but they're still there. Others, I can see now that they've dissolved with time, love and compassion.

This is a mystery to me, how love and compassion dissolve the knots. I want to understand it so that I can replicate it. I want to understand it so I can control it, really. I sit at the picnic table watching the wind along the surface of the lake, the family in the distance still casting their lines. Kids now gather on the baseball field and I hear the steady rhythm of glove and baseball. I stay long enough for my soul to settle within me, touching my belovedness once again. The day feels complete. I close my eyes and breathe, kissed by the breeze and held by an inner presence drawing me close in love, dissolving my knots again and again and again.