What to call it

Believing that the body and the mind are one, I've been exploring how they work together. But something else is involved. Everyone senses this. It is something that connects this one entity--Nancy's body and mind--to the outside. This something feels real, but because it doesn'tseem to be observed by the senses, it has an air of unreality about it. What connects me to the maple tree outside my window? That special maple tree was planted by my father nearly 50 years ago. Although I see the tree, know it to be real, know that soon buds will appear, then leaves, the  shape of it so famiilar, I also know that there is a bond between it and me. To call that bond "love" doesn't actually name the bond, but only approximates it.

On Tuesday night a group of women will gather in my living room, here where I now am observing the tree, and will share our efforts to get at what could be called, grandly, "the meaning of life", but less grandly, "what is important", or just what has come into our heads the last little while. The ambiance might be called "love" but that isn't it exactly. It is "community" perhaps, or "camaraderie." This spirit has been growing over a period of fifteen years, becoming stronger. It is akin to family but not exactly the same.

"Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." This feeling of being gathered together in the name of something good is palpable.