I love the vistas that I get to enjoy every day. Somewhere, and I do think it was in one of the car trips from Minnesota to Maine, I began to be more aware of what happened to me when I came upon an amazing vista. What I experience when I drove around a curve and world opened up. As my eyes took in the expansiveness it seemed that my heart opened up as well. Those opening up, vista moments happened again and again. My heart experienced great exercises in being big and wide open.
I knew throughout the time that my heart felt closed and needed to be protected that I would not lose that big wide open capacity. I held it with me inside my little home.
I live in the town center of Patten, I do not have an expansive vista from my house. I have trees and in the winter there is more opening up of the big sky and the horizons beyond. This "nestling in space" also soothes and comforts my heart. It is the other of my expanded heart that soaks in all the vistas.
At 21 years old, I left Chicago (with the love of my life Steve) for the Driftless Land of the Kickapoo Valley in Southwestern Wisconsin. We lived in a hollow in the valley, way way protected from the wind. The vistas were not accessible, we looked straight up to see wide open space. Vistas were a part of the Ridge Runners lives. I loved the vistas but being in the "hollow" felt more manageable, safer. Here I am 50 years later, still taking in the the wonder and teaching of these wide open spaces. Making a home a little further down from the highest ridges.
It is the in and out, expanding and contracting, the big and small that exercise my heart. What I can take in and notice in the present moment. It is my heart that traverses the universe and holds the tiniest feelings and nudges me forward and pulls me back.
It has been a "pulling back" that "nudged" me forward to begin to blog again. It was a cup of instant coffee that kept showing up as a story that wanted to be shared. The "nudge" persisted and finally today the instant coffee has found its way onto this page.
For a very long I had stopped drinking coffee, a long time. When I quit drinking coffee I was a big time coffee snob. I picked up my beans fresh roasted and ground just for making cold press coffee. I made my own cold press coffee. I only drank coffee out where I knew they had really good beans and water! Then I began getting ready for homeopathy and knew that I had to stop drinking coffee. I slowly weaned myself off. First I reduced the coffee I drank, I hardly ever had coffee after my morning, but I got myself down to one cup a day. Then I went to decaf. Then I reintroduced morning tea. Then I stopped drinking coffee. Until this year.
I tried a cup as someone had left some really good beans at my house. I pulled out the grinder. I made a small pot of french press coffee and I had a taste. It was good. I went weeks without another cup. I had discovered Starbucks (don't judge me) instant coffee from my BFF Lon before I had stopped drinking any coffee. This year I found that there were all kinds of coffee options in those little Starbucks packages and I bought a few.
This is where heart muscles come are used in this story. I often now make myself a cup of instant coffee and I like it. So a few weeks ago when I would start drinking or stirring my instant coffee I started thinking, feeling my grandparents, Ray and Mary. The picture that would originate in my heart and move to my head was them sitting at their little table in their tiny little kitchen in Sycamore, Illinois. I was maybe in high school and it was the first house that they owned. It was a small mid-century ranch with a full basement and a garage attached.
I kept remembering them drinking Sanka coffee (I had to look it up, they still make Sanka instant coffee). It is quiet and morning and they are there at the table sharing the start of their day. I didn't know why they drank instant coffee. I didn't know anyone else that drank it, and I didn't like the smell.
So here I am, probably close to 60 years later, drinking my cup of instant coffee. My grandparents and I are drinking our cup of morning coffee together, we are at the same table and I am sharing the story of instant coffee.
I have taken in a whole lot of wide open spaces so that I can hold this special tiny vista in my heart with lots and lots of love and a little bit of instant coffee.
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