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The closer you look, the less you see. If you want to understand the Pacific Ocean, you’d hardly look at a tiny drop of water flowing into it from a river – you’d need to back up and see the thing in context, see the whole picture.

How much damage is done in business, politics, and relationships by folks who charge into something with a “solution” or a “change” that causes greater damage because the situation or the problem wasn’t understood well or fully? How many times have we each been embarrassed by actions we took or words we spoke that clearly didn’t have the wisdom of good understanding behind them?

To understand something, you have to be able to see the context.

Great sages have talked about this throughout history as it relates to our ability to walk the path of a Faith Journey. In different ways, with different words, in all languages, they’ve described that moving further toward G-d in this life requires that we release our human requirement to understand everything about G-d.

One of the greatest favors bestowed on the soul transiently in this life is to enable it to see so distinctly and feel so profoundly that it cannot comprehend God at all. …They who know God most perfectly perceive that God is infinitely incomprehensible.
Those who have less clear vision do not perceive so clearly how greatly God transcends their vision.

St John of the Cross

This is tough for us in our western world, where we’ve constructed a universe in our mind that we know and fundamentally understand. Our addiction to knowing and understanding are the very things that keep us from moving toward G-d.

Walk outside on a dark night. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness. Try see something clearly in the dark by looking directly at it. You’ll find that if you look a little to the side, instead of directly at the thing, you’ll be able to see it much more clearly. You won’t see color and detail, but you’ll see shape and movement. While there are physiological reasons for this, it demonstrates the point well.

There are things for which we have no context for understanding. If we take our natural human approach – if we look directly at them – we won’t be able to see them. But if we accept that we can’t try and see the thing in the same way we’re accustomed to seeing things, the shape might start to appear.

Try it next time you find yourself out on a dark night. Each time I use this trick, it reminds me of the humility I need to nurture in order to have a chance to glimpse a shape now and then that might be the edge of G-d.

We’ve had an amazingly mild autumn in Colorado. We’re within days of the winter solstice, and it’s 60 degrees today, as it was yesterday. We’ve had a little snow, and a couple of cold spells, but overall it’s been incredible.

I was chatting with a friend the other day, and we were fretting over the fear that this mild weather now might mean some really nasty stuff later on. As-if there is some sort of cosmic balance of “rotten days”, and we might now have gotten on the wrong side of that balance.

It’s an interesting tendency, isn’t it? We look at many things in life within the context of this “ledger sheet” view of the universe. As-if someplace up in the cosmos, there’s an accounting clerk hunched over a ledger book with his green eyeshade on, making sure that we’re each enduring our fair share of misery. If we’re blessed with some good fortune, or unseasonably great weather, or a string of particularly good luck, we automatically look for “the catch” – the other shoe that must be going to drop.

It comes back to our desire to look at everything in life as a “payment” or a “barter”. There’s no free lunch, right? If it seems too good to be true, it probably is, right? There’s always a price to pay, right?

When we’re dealing with each other – with other human beings – it’s probably a good idea to maintain a wary approach. Since this is how we see the world, this is how we deal with one another. It’s safe.

But when it comes to Creation, the cosmos, the universe or the multiverse, or just plain Mother Nature, there’s a healthier way to let ourselves be part of the world. That image of the accounting clerk and the green eyeshade not only limits our capacity to receive the gifts of Creation, but also limits our capacity to be the source of gifts.

Every single day is filled with gifts. Sometimes the dice fall in our favor for several days in a row, and the gift is even sweeter than we expected. Sometimes our perception of “luck” or “fortune” limits our ability to see the gifts that fill the path around us, and we’re challenged to build the wisdom required to share and experience gifts in a new way.

Our fear of “the other shoe” or the “price to be paid” can consumes so much of our energy that we’re prevented from savoring the beauty of what’s been laid right in front of us.

For Christians, we’re approaching the final Sunday of the season of Advent. It’s a season of preparation – of opening ourselves to Spirit and anticipation. It’s not a time to worry about ledger sheets. It’s not a time to worry about whether or not we’ve received our fair share of misery. It’s a time of simple and hopeful beginning. A time to rejoice in the gifts that are laid all along the path that we’re on. A time to celebrate all humanity, all Creation, and all wonder.

Ad-vent: The arrival. The beginning. Especially of something momentous.

Every single day is momentous – every day is the advent of yet another gift.

Seek it, feel it, and enjoy it.

It’s a wonderful day outside today. Tomorrow might be another beautiful day, or it might not, but I think I’ll deal with that tomorrow. Today is waiting for me – I think I’ll not make it wait any longer…

In the pale inky darkness my eyes catch a tiny bit of movement in the field about 100 yards in front of me. There’s a sliver of faint pre-dawn light along the eastern horizon, which provides a hint of light on the meadow.

Peering through my binoculars, I can see the form more clearly – a single deer moving across the open field in the darkness. It moves like a doe, but the fact that it’s moving alone leads me to believe it’s a young buck – either looking for trouble or trying to stay out of it.

The rut seems to be peaking this week, and the growing energy in the woods has me amped with the hope of strong activity today. Tomorrow is the full moon, so this little sliver of morning is the only real darkness the deer have seen tonight. Typically, a full moon tends to bring the rut to a fever pitch, and the electricity in the air is nearly palpable this morning.

As the light builds, I hear a doe off behind my left shoulder snorting. She could be warning her group of a danger, or trying to get them back together into a group before daybreak. I hear the footsteps of deer in the woods back over my right shoulder, but am unable to see anything when I crane my neck and watch over that shoulder. I suspect that there’s a doe that’s split off from her group, interested in gaining the attention of a nearby buck. That would explain the snort a few minutes ago as well – the dominant doe trying to bring her group back together.

I rattle a bit with the antlers I’ve got up in my stand with me, seeing if I can attract the attention of any bucks in the area. By the time the sun is rising, I’ve rattled 3 or 4 times, and have watched 3 different bucks flitting nervously around the area. My rattling is almost meaningless, as the group of does close by has all the attention of the bucks in the area.

I hear the prancing footsteps of deer over my right shoulder again, and this time I can see a lone doe, with a decent buck chasing her. She ducks down into the creek, about 75 yards to my right, and I see the buck head down that way.

It’s interesting watching a buck chasing a doe in heat. He spends a good deal of time with his nose down on the ground, following her scent. Even when she’s in sight right in front of him, he’ll drop his nose to the ground as he moves – snorting that pheromone drug off the ground as he moves toward the object of his lust. This is what gets so many of ‘em killed on the highways this time of year – they’re completely oblivious to the world around them – focused completely on that object of lust leaving a trail for him to follow.

This morning, his object of lust is in the mood, and anxious to be caught. Occasionally, he slows down too much for her – spending too much time sniffing in the leaves after her – so she stops and waits for him to catch up a bit. I see her at the edge of the creek bank, having climbed the other side now, and waiting to make sure her buck sees where she heads. He apparently does, so she gallops off to the hedgerow where I’m sitting, stopping 20 yards from me to look back over her shoulder again.

I suspect she catches some scent from me, because she doesn’t wait long before jumping the fence beneath me, and scampering up the lane a bit. She stops there 30 yards from my brother-in-law, who’s tucked back into a cedar tree, and looks him square in the eye for a few seconds before heading up the hill.

Meanwhile, her suitor has stopped beneath my stand, and has his head up looking for that which he is pursuing. He casts his nose just a bit to catch the scent of her direction, and bounds over the fence and after her. He, too, will stop and look at my brother-in-law from 30 yards away, before heading up into the woods in pursuit of the object of his passion.

This dance won’t go on long. She’ll let him catch her, and nature will run its course. Afterward, she’ll go find her group and settle back into the routine of survival. If nature didn’t take its course, and she’s not pregnant, then she’ll likely go through another estrus cycle in a month or so. More than likely, nature will take its course, and she’ll drop a fawn or two into spring litter on the forest floor.

And next year, this little enclave of deer in this little corner of the universe will have evolved through one more generation.

I’ll look forward to sitting in this stand again next year, watching the frenzy of the rut as it develops. I’ll carry with me the lessons I’ve learned on this hunt, and look forward to lessons waiting for me still.

It’s counterintuitive, but focusing inward to quiet yourself opens your mind and senses more fully to the world around you.

I’m reminded of this each time I sit a treestand while hunting. I’ve isolated myself from human connection by retreating into a secluded spot in the woods. I’ve taken pains to enter the “space” of my treestand in a very slow and quiet manner, blending with the space around me as best I can. I’ve taken up a still and quiet posture in the treestand. I’ve focused a good deal of energy inward, on making myself as unobtrusive as possible. I want to become part of the space around me – to blend – rather than standing out as anything individual.

My body quiets and cools. I always need to dress warm for this, as my heartbeat drops to 50 or 55 as I focus inward on stillness. Vision and human language are the inputs our brain depends on the most these days in our evolutionary journey, and in the treestand, I’ve eliminated both of them. Even when the light is good, my vision is generally limited to a couple of shooting lanes close to my stand.

In this state, I tune much more keenly to the sounds in the space around me. As the pre-dawn darkness gives way to faint light in the east, the sound of tires on the highway several miles away becomes more common. I hear the squirrels roust from their nests, and hear their claws on the bark as they move through the trees around me. When they’re on the ground, I can tell exactly how many are down and where they are as they disturb the leaves they dig through.

I hear the beat of my heart in my chest, and the whoosh in my ears soon after each beat. Thu-whoosh, thu-whoosh. A slow and steady beat.

I hear a small flock of songbirds as they fly overhead, the sound of the air under their wingbeats giving me a good guess as to what birds they might be by how they’re beating their wings. A large flock of 30 or 40 birds sounds as loud as thunder as they thump past 50 feet above me – I hear the sound of their wings for 100 yards before they reach me, and 100 yards after they pass.

Mid-day on a nice day I hear a tiny scraping in the leaves not far away. I watch intently but see no movement. A mouse maybe? Training my binoculars on the spot, I eventually make out a small garter snake pulling himself out of the leaf litter into the warm sun.

The footsteps of deer around me tell me a good deal about what they’re doing even when I can’t see them. Are they nervously poking about, or calmly grazing? Are they talking to each other softly, or snorting a warning?

The movement of air becomes something my ears perceive in a way my eyes can’t. I map the movement of tiny gusts of air through the bare branches of the woods around me by the path of its sound, and am able to predict when I’ll feel it in my tree based on how my brain perceives the arms and reach of the pockets moving about.

I hear individual dry leaves bounce off branches as they flutter to the ground.

I smell the shift in the wind. The smell is damp and musty when the air moves across the creek and the forest floor before it gets to me, while it changes dramatically to grassy and dusty when it comes to me from the open field on the other side of me.

There’s a Chickadee who comes around in the evening, about the same time each day. I can hear Chickadees throughout the woods around me, flitting and buzzing, but this one seems to follow the same pattern on the same branches around the same time each afternoon. He’s very curious about me, often stopping on branches only a couple feet away from me and watching me before moving to another branch.

After a few days, I come to be able to recognize what kind of bird is fluttering through the woods by the sound of the air beneath it’s wings – the wingbeats of birds are sometimes quite distinctive.

Of course, when deer that might be prey come close, my senses zero in completely on the prey. But 99%+ of the time, I’m focused on remaining quiet and unobtrusive. Doing so opens me completely to the input of the world I’ve immersed myself into.

As my mind absorbs the space where I sit, my heart and soul become part of the Place where I sit.