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New Day Herald

Dave Wright, Windermere, Llama

The Windermere Bridge

 

At the Eastern end of Pharaoh Pond on the West end of Windermere, there is a bridge. Well, I like to call it a bridge, but then when I was about seven, I liked calling the short wall between our house and the neighbors the ‘Alamo.’ We had fashioned a sort of scaffold with an old board that rested on a couple saw horses and we nobly defended the fort, getting shot and falling to the dust below and then shouting ‘new man’ and clamoring back up to join the fray. I didn’t think of it as violent at the time. And, I didn’t know how tuned in I was with reincarnation 🙂 I just loved making a lot of noise and getting dirty as hell.

Anyway, the bridge. It’s a board, really. Laid out across what some might call a ditch, but then it’s me, so I like to call it a river. A very small river that affords water from the big pond to flow into the smaller pond just down the hill a bit. Don’t you just love to embellish stuff? I do. Anyway, the bridge gives way a bit when I step on it, but then how boring would it be if it didn’t?

And that brings me to my point for this huge bit of wisdom that Windermere helped me to learn. When love seems to be on the other side of the ‘river’ and I’m wondering how to get there so I can have some of that love, I can feel, well, stuck. What to do? Demand that love get over here to my side of the river? Swim? Take a boat? Build a bridge? Physically, building a bridge sounds crazy, but metaphorically? It makes all kinds of sense.

When I want to go visit love, I build a bridge. When I smile at someone, I build a bridge. When I make kindness my intention for the day, I go out and work on the bridge. And the neat thing for me is, my ‘bridge building’ starts to make the river less wide. The other side where love lives, starts to be closer and closer.

Can I expect that someday I won’t need a bridge and love will be on my side of the river too? Why not? But at those times when, for whatever reason, I’m not ‘feeling’ the love, and I can see it on the distant shore, I can remember the bridge and start in. No expectations. Just a dream.

I realized a while back that I’ve had so many amazing bridge building experiences at Windermere that involve the land, but more importantly, involve other people. Kisses for Vallentino, the llama. Hugs at the barn. Meditations and deep connections made at Quelin. The innocence of the horses when people would climb out of the ‘tour’ truck at Horse Flats below the barn, and make their way toward them, with the intention of loving on them.

So yeah, Windermere is a bridge for me. A toll-free crossing from a sense of separation, to that wonderful land of love that has always been there, and now it’s here. I am consistently open to building bridges that help me walk from separation to pure love.

God Bless us all and thank you John-Roger for making Windermere a part of your ministry.

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