The 1798 lines from the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” are echoed in the title and in my memory. It was 1964 and memorization of the first 14 lines was mandatory for writing the graduating English exam.  Now all that would be useless detail until yesterday.  After the third day of seeing the landless horizon it became evident that I had lived my whole life within sight of land.  I had paid very little attention to the spaces on earth.  This morning again water was everywhere and land was nowhere.  It was like being in a suspended state.  The land provides a foundation for human existence.  As a dirty-finger-nailed gardner I knew that this growing business was not clean.  On my travels I often stopped to look at gardens.  This morning again the water below and the vapor clouds above hint at Inle Lake in Myanmar where we caught a glimpse of floating gardens.  Tomatoe plants and cucumbers and peas all planted in floating beds (floating on tangled water hyacinth, weeds and reeds that have accumulated over years to create a thick layer of floating land) Farmers guiding there boats through the islands of crops to harvest.

In the morning stillness the memory flashes images to recall the roll of the water lungs in Inle Lake.  Then along the horizon a lone bird darts flashing every winged meal from memory.  The sounds of the rolling waves lash at the ships hull.  The evening sun dances with and on the waves.  There is a new steadfastness in waiting.  The horizon is constant.  No land constant.  I just spent the morning listening to Marcos Jassan explaing Bahia Kumbhaka and the power of the pause in breath work.  Pausing every visual expectation and replacing input-saturation with a visual breathtaking, a rest that moves beyond restorative to reprieve.

The sunlight surrenders at eventide to the silvery moon.  All will be well and all manner of things are well.  A growing awareness of the roles of a vast creation bending in our direction to feed us, to roll with us, to support us and to restore us.  The image of the seafarers sailing so far out to sea that the kirk was no longer visible.  These are breath pausing moments for our times. Forgotten is the poets pleading that, “he prayeth best, who loveth best, all things great and small, for the dear God who loveth us, he made and loveth all.”