Intuition

I am learning that one of the tools for living a full life is honoring intuition.

This week in the eastern United States has been one snowstorm after another, which is just fine with me. I am fit enough to shovel; I am not losing income; I have the great privilege of being able to settle in to a pace set by the uncontrollable forces of nature. I LOVE giving in to it. Snow days are a gift.

Whie enjoying the gift, I am not blind to the fact that snow days completely disrupt schedules and that - literally overnight - shovelling emerges as a survival skill, second only, perhaps, to maintaing fire.

Shovelling out cars in a townhouse community is a family event of sorts. Folks boldly tackle the seemingly insurmountable piles of white, exchanging stories of epic snows from years gone by as the piles of snow are re-arranged in a manner that makes movement possible. Shoveling torques your body in unfamilar ways, and somehow that generally feels good - especially because it has the beneift of providing a discrete vantage point from which to watch neighborhood kids playing in their own snow memories.

Maybe somebody makes hot chocolate. The work gets done. Neighbors lend a helping hand.

It is the helping hand thing that can be a bit problematic. Will my neighbor be insulted if I shovel their sidewalk? Will the woman three doors down be appreicative if I dig her car out, or will she be watching from her window, terrified that I might chip her car's finish? What if I do chip the damn finish?

Should I use salt on someone else's sidewalk? What about their pets? What about the enviornmental considerations of salt? I will use salt on my sidewalk but I don't want that on anyone else's conscience. What about the teens who are out and about trying to make a buck? Shouldn't they have a shot at some business?

Forget it. I will do my own shovelling and retreat to my warm home. I have plenty to do.

And yet. Yesterday. My neighbor - a nice guy with a bum hip - was out shovelling his car alone at dusk. Something told me - JUST TOLD ME - to go out and help him. As I walked out with my shovel, he welcomed my help and thanked me for coming. And then he took a deep breath, and with heistation, said that he'd been meaning to tell me something. His wife has been ill. Very ill. It has been a sercet they have held to themselves for months, but can no longer shoulder on their own.

AH HA. The sky opened. My intuition to help my neighbor wasn't really about the snow. Or the shovelling. In retrospect, it was about being attentive to the needs of someone else before I even knew what the needs were.

I get a kick out of being caught up in those moments. For me, it is in the times when our intuition won't let us go, and we take a risk of interaction, that eternity breaks into our life and we get a glimpse of our eternal connections both to each other - and to something else that far exceeds are ability to grasp.

Good reminders.