finding comfort …

Sometimes, just before you fall asleep, there is that moment where dark thoughts and scary scenarios creep into your head space. When you stop being busy with the noise and nonsense of the day, realities confront you and demand some attention. Where do you go to find comfort in this scary world?

I contemplated this last night as I looked up at the bright moonlit sky between the branches of giant pine trees, through the screened ceiling of our tent high in the California mountains. I took note that staring up into the bright moonlight with the sound of the creek rushing past our campsite, that I had not one scary thought creeping in to my conciousness. Nature was giving me all the comfort I could possibly need in this big scary world we live in.

We can’t control so much about our lives as politics, war, illness, family strife and other troubling matters swirl around us. But they do in fact, swirl around us. How we choose to react, and how we choose to spend our time are an entirely different matter. We can adopt a lovely meditation practice called, pebble in the stream. Focus your attention on being a pebble in a stream that the water must wash around. You stay grounded and let all the troubles of life and those things you have no control over pass you by, and wash downstream.

The sound of water comforts me.

Moonlight and stars comfort me.

Nature comforts me.

Finding comfort in a scary world is nothing more than looking to nature for that which we have gotten so far away from. Comfort is all around us in the heavens above and the sounds of nature. It’s free. It’s abundant.  And it’s there for the CHOOSING.