The Chaos of Life

We are hanging out in the Olympia, Washington, area right now---I love western Washington! When I joined the army in 1974, my goal was to be stationed at Fort Lewis. While that never happened, I still have a spot in my heart for this beautiful green country! I like green; it is a color which soothes my spirit, and western Washington is green!! I can look out the window of the home where we are staying and look squarely into a forest, complete with all the critters that live in most forests! When evening comes, they come out onto the lawn and put on a little show for me!
But that is not all there is. Yesterday, we stepped out of the natural wilderness and into an urban wilderness---the Pike Place Market in Seattle! I had always wanted to see that place, and I was not disappointed. What is disappointing is trying to put the experience into words. Pike Place is not just a place where pictures tell the story. It is a chaos of smells, sights, and sounds. To speak of one part of it at the exclusion of the other two is to cheapen the experience. Flowers and fish, coffee and incense, cinnamon rolls and French fries---all mixed up together in the noise of language, cars, and street musicians. I liked it!
So much of life is that same mixture. I see things and become so enamored with what I see that I forget to smell or listen, or else I lose the vision in the focus on the noise. So often I am looking and forget to touch, or else I touch and forget to smell. Life is a mixture which challenges all the senses, and I need to remember to let each of my them do their job so that my experience might be complete, whether I am in the woods or in the middle of the city. There is an element of chaos to the mixture, for there is a lot happening at once, just like Pike Place, but the chaos is what provides the energy that makes the experience worthwhile. I think part of the problem today is that people have compartmentalized the chaos of life and their experiences are incomplete.
Our forefathers and mothers expereienced life completely---their lives depended on it. I want to learn once again, for I believe my spiritual life and well being rather depends on it!