Life's chaos....and giving birth to a "dancing star".

The local Pacific waters got unexpectedly bumpy - quite contrary to what the marine forecast had suggested. It was nothing very serious at all, just caught us by surprise.

Life can be a bit like that.

Bumps and lumps and occasional chaos fall into everyone's life occasionally. And there are many, of course, for whom chaos is an everyday occurrence.

I have a small app on my iPhone that encourages "awareness practice". Every day it offers an inspirational quote, and a small daily assignment that encourages living with kindness and compassion towards others...and self.

On this particular day some chaos fell into our lives, nothing really serious, just unsettling. 

Strangely, the words that came up on my phone app were timely. It was a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th Century German philosopher, composer, cultural critic, and poet.

"One must still have chaos in one,

to give birth to a dancing star."

The daily assignment: "Today, see if you can identify the chaos, the disorder, the incompleteness in you, in your dance with life."

I needed to read that...and then follow its counsel. I thought about the whole process of birth. It can be chaotic and painful. Making life decisions can be much the same with the incumbent disorder, confusion, conflicting thoughts, contrary advice from outside...but ultimately, and most often, there is the "birth" of a child, of an idea, of a direction, and even a "dancing star".

We found a quiet cove to get out of the wind and waves and driving rain, which had further increased.

It offered pleasant respite...and in no time at all, the skies cleared, the wind subsided, and the rain stopped.

We launched the kayaks again, and towards the north-west, a tiny rainbow, always a sign of hope for me, suddenly materialised and seemed to embrace the base of Maple Mountain.

I understood, in that moment of time, that the small amount of "chaos" we were feeling, would be transient.

Life would settle again, just as the placid waters of Burgoyne Bay, were now silky smooth.

We paddled on and on.

Evening came...

...and a peaceful darkness fell upon the waters.

There would be a birthing of a "dancing star", somewhere, somehow, someway...

...and we would simply trust in the intervening moments, until the image of that event became clear.