The Wind makes the Way

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
— Tao Te Ching Verse I, stanza II

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” —James 4:13-15

Many years ago I was catering a wedding at the Daoist Center on Sardis Road in South Asheville.
I was a beautiful late Fall day.

One of those late September days,
after a rain, where the air was bright and clear.
You could see with hawk-eye detail each falling leaf against a bright perfectly Carolina Blue Sky.
A crisp steady southern breeze of 15 mph fluttered the white dresses of girls blowing bubbles through congregation.

A perfect day, that promised a perfect evening of celebration.
Except there was a problem.
You see, the wedding planner and the bride had designed that the bridal party would approach the Altar
Over a hundred yards of beautiful white shimmering silk,
laid over fresh mown emerald green grass.

Being the resourceful wedding professionals we are
(and given that the food was mostly catered from 12 Bones- requiring little preparation)
We wrestled this snake of silk against the steady wind for the better part of an hour.
We would stake out the head, and the tail would flap in the breeze like a New Years’ dragon,
We would stake out the grooms side and the brides side would fly out into the chairs.
A fair bit of cussing punctuated the discussion at the Daoist Center that day.
There was just no way to keep it in place.
After a time the bride, in tears, suggested we give it up.
Roll it up.
No silk on her wedding day.
Then the Grooms father laughed, a big hearty reassuring belly laugh,
And taking his new daughter in law in his arms, whispered,
“Don’t you see my child,
At a Daoist wedding,
the Wind makes the Way.”

So much of our culture centers around the idea that harmony is order.

A place for everything and everything in it’s place.
That things done well, and with a care, except themselves from fear, as better poet once said.
But what if,
what if,
true harmony, is just letting things be as they are. As the day has shaped them to be.

What if, with hearty belly laugher,
We simply,
Let the mystery be.