A few months ago, I started hearing the word in fragments of mother-daughter conversations in my home. She had been physically out of school since spring break this year, and we had been mostly self-quarantined for several months until school officially ended towards the end of May. No summer camp. No meeting up with friends. No getting together with cousins. I guess, somewhere along the line, she decided that the home – or rather she, wanted another dog to give her and our seven year old puppy some company.
And so her search started with online portals, spreading the word among her friends, calling local shelters and so on. Her requirements were fairly stringent and that shortened the list of possibilities considerably. Almost every other day, Mom would help her put in adoption applications when there was a “match” online. A few days later the email would come, saying that the “match” had already been adopted. Week after week, I could see her getting more and more disheartened.
“Give it some time, honey. Be patient, and it will happen. The puppy you are supposed to get will show up.” Supposedly comforting words from a Dad who had tried to discourage her from the idea from the very beginning. I wasn’t sure that she was “ready” for another dog in the house. More like I was the one who wasn’t ready. So, after eight weeks of this roller coaster of applying and being denied, it seemed like she let the idea go for a few weeks. Mom kept making phone calls, leaving messages for folks.
Then, one lady from Indiana called back on July 1st afternoon and said – yes, there is availability. Possibility. Hope.
So, we decided that we were going to make an eight hour roundtrip to see if things would work out. A few hours later, another phone call. A lady whom my wife had called six weeks ago was on the phone. She said that one of her puppies was ready to be re-homed. In the course of the conversation, we came to know that our current seven year old had the same bloodline as the one that she was trying to get re-homed. Not only that, she lived two hours away and she could bring the puppy to our home the next day as she was going to be passing through Cleveland on a road-trip to north-west Ohio.
Too good to be true, yes? If I hadn’t been witness to all of it myself, I would have said “no way” too. The combination of yielding time and space to a heart set on a love-driven desire can allow for the universe to work in our favor. On July 3rd 2020, virtually seven years to the day that we adopted “Tucker” ( who was renamed “Bubbles”), we received his sister “Flower” (who was renamed “Bindi”). Unfettered joy, some tears, a lot of broken sleep patterns, and a huge rearranging of our lives has happened in the past week.
In the small, last minute Zoom meeting on Friday, I asked Lucille – so, what’s new with you? I hadn’t told them any of this story yet. She said, “I just got finished reading the book – ‘When the Heart Waits’ – by Sue Monk Kidd. She talks about giving yourself the ‘chrysalis time’ in your life – time to let the caterpillar develop into the butterfly (of creativity).” How appropriate, I thought. Giving yourself time, allowing the universe to work in harmony with you when you sometimes feel as if the whole world is conspiring against you, your heart and your goals and dreams…
Chrysalis time for the heart and its space, the heartspace that is our constant companion. I dug up an Osho essay where he spoke about time, reason (the mind), and the heart:
Time exists only for the mind, for reason. For the heart there is no time; the heart exists in timelessness. So, the mind insists on haste, hurry, urgency – and the mind becomes tense. Things should happen instantly – such is the insistence of reason. But the heart knows no time, there are no clocks for it. That is why the heart exists timelessly and it can wait — infinitely. — Osho in Vedanta – The Art of Dying
So, here we are. Life teaches us so many lessons. It invites us to listen with the heart, to allow for our heartspace to simply be timeless. Timelessness invites us to disengage from the daily conflict of opposites. In timelessness, the heart of the caterpillar learns to rest in, allow for chrysalis time.
Kumud
P.S. After a few days, Bubbles and Bindi are starting to play together. His heart has accepted that Bindi is here to stay, that she is part of the family. All of us look forward to their football-like scrimmages at all hours of the day. He may outweigh here by a factor of five (that won’t last long!), but that doesn’t deter her from taking him on with the youthful heart and dynamic energy of one who knows not much about reason, time or space.
P.P.S I invite you to join our weekly twitter conversation on Sunday, July 12 at 9amET in #SpiritChat. I may share a puppy photo or two with you, and give you the daily update of puppy mayhem. Yes, there will be questions and tea and cookies. It will be good to see some of you after a week’s hiatus… – @AjmaniK
Bubbles – the result, so far, of seven years of all-heart
The #SpiritChat Community 