Monday, 29th June 2015 (North Side, Anguilla) — Over the past few weeks there have been two phrases that keep popping into my mind. They are wandering through the wilderness and the shifting sands of life. I’ve been wondering why these phrases are repeatedly surfacing in my thoughts. Sometimes I awake at night and hear them silently in my head.
It’s at a time like this when I desire to write that I call upon the Great Spirit to inspire me to compose something that makes sense not only to myself, as a writer, but to readers as well. My heart has to be in the right space to structure whatever I am thinking into any sort of meaning because I must listen to the inner divine voice talking and not my mind’s ego. Today I stayed quietly listening to Spirit’s prompting even though I distracted myself by concentrating on reviewing a lengthy report that I’d been asked to give feedback on. This evening Jah has pushed me to compose what I hope will be a thought-provoking, written meditation to inspire us to look more deeply at life and how we live ours.
Three weeks ago, as I read a daily devotional from the book Finding Fulfillment in Christ by Alejandro Bullón, I reflected again on the expressions of wandering and wilderness. The devotion for June 6, “Search for God”, spoke of a young man who continued a lifestyle that was detrimental to his being well. One day he found a text in the Bible that spoke to him, and encouraged him to turn his life around.
Spirit guided me to search for further inspirational readings on this subject. So I pulled out the Women of Color Study Bible that I purchased at a shop in the Fairplay Centre on Anguilla in September 2004 and read one of the Insight Essays. I reflected on thoughts that I’d been having of wandering through the wilderness or the shifting sands of life, which I’ve experienced more frequently in recent years.
Reading these sacred words made me contemplate more in-depth on the meaning of wandering, wilderness and shifting. I thought not only in terms of my own life experiences, but also the lives of other persons who have spoken with me sharing their stories of what they’ve been through.
What does this wandering through the wilderness or the shifting sands of life teach us? How do we survive these dry seasons that arise in our lives? These are serious questions for all of us (men, women, boys and girls) to ponder.
Not many individuals may pay close attention to the season of drought or high winds that we’ve experienced recently on Anguilla, nor heart-rending events that occurred in other countries, like the murder of nine Americans of African descent in Charleston, South Carolina, or the law passed to deport thousands of people of Haitian ancestry residing in the Dominican Republic. We are all impacted by the weather, as well as by incidents happening in communities across the globe. None of us is immune to these occurrences.
I’ve been mindful of the effects that not having sufficient rainfall causes in our community. When there is no water from the clouds in the sky, our cisterns are not replenished and we have to buy truckloads of desalinised H2O to fill them. That alone has an adverse impact on our pockets. It causes us to spend more money than we budgeted for monthly expenses. Vegetation also dries up, plants don’t flourish robustly and dust floats everywhere in the air getting into our houses, vehicles, eyes and lungs.
I wonder if we ever stop to ask ourselves, “What’s really going on?” Do we merely continue living our daily lives as usual? The next question we might pose is, “Are we being punished by God for our wicked ways of not obeying The Most High’s Commandments, or is this dryness just due to man’s negligent care of the planet and climate change?”
Spiritual perceptiveness tells me that we need to query what is happening and not just leave it up to a sign of the times that we’re presently living in. May be we ought to ask ourselves, “Are we living righteously, or are we just doing whatever we choose to do?”
Like the sand on the beach and ocean floor, life is ever shifting from one moment to the next. We can be as prepared as possible, especially during hurricane season, which the Department of Disaster Management wisely advises us to do – but the circumstances of life itself are always changing. So no matter how prepared we are, we must also be able to bend like the tree branches blowing in the wind and go with the flow of the unexpected situations that may occur in our lives.
Sometimes we are prepared for these challenges that interrupt the normal flow of our living. At other times they hit us like a ton of concrete blocks. We are thrown off of our customary tracks, lose balance and become ungrounded. Then we have to search and work hard to gain our footing again and continue walking down the road of life.
We’ve got to find a way to remind ourselves, during these trying times, that God has our backs and, no matter what happens, the Lord is walking in our footsteps. Furthermore, we must remember to live in righteousness and not succumb to compromising our morals and integrity regardless of what anyone else may be doing or how other persons behave. Standing up for firm convictions of what we know are honest, truthful and morally right is the only way I know Jah wants us to live. And that is not easy to do in these times of wickedness and evil abounding unleashed in this earthly realm.
There are many times that I have personal conversations with God asking The Creator: “What is my purpose? Am I on the right track of what has been divinely planned?” I continually question the worthiness of my life’s activities. For example, immediately following the ending of the Anguilla Lit Fest on the 26th of May, I went into a few days of profound bewilderment about what I would do next to keep myself occupied. I seemed unable to see where I wanted to go, the direction that God had ordained for me. Yet I kept holding on to faith that everything is in divine order and, eventually, I would be able to make my way anew.
What do these dry periods in our lives do to us? We can slump into deep depression when life seems to have dried up for us. We can wallow in our own misery of how nothing turned out as we had wished for. Or we can choose to rise above the uncertainty of our lives and trust that “everything happens for the best”, learn our lessons, accept what is, change what we can and move onward.
Lately, I’ve met several women who’ve told me that they’re going through a dry season in their lives. They have been feeling depressed or frustrated from unemployment or under-earning (not having sufficient income), dealing with raising children or elder care, searching for adequate housing and other aspects of daily living. I find that in spite of my own diminished circumstances I seek ways to help uplift these sisters who appear to have become downtrodden in their countenances. It’s a sisterly/brotherly role we engage in – encouraging others to seek solutions that work best for them, being angels inspiring each other when we’re at our lowest points in life.
My way of surviving during seasonal dryness is to make new acquaintances and delve into projects that I design for myself or with someone else. This month, I joined talents with another sister-friend with whom I worked on facilitating gender equality training earlier this year. We’re pulling together our resourcefulness for developing programmes to inspire women and men to achieve greater heights in life. Of course, we have to seek funding for these pilot projects, but I believe because these ideas came from the Spirit realm, meaning God divinely ordained them, that the money will come forth from somewhere for us to produce these worthy initiatives.
Another method that I utilise to combat the woes of a dry season is to volunteer with various community endeavours. To keep myself from spending too much time home alone, I also make weekly excursions to the beach with friends. Diving into the crystal-clear, aquamarine coloured, warm water of the Caribbean Sea always soothes my restless soul. It’s a natural place to go where I quietly surrender my concerns to the universe’s energy, and ask The Creator to guide me through the process of letting go – releasing and relinquishing whatever has been weighing heavily on my mind or in my heart.
We must all find ways to uplift, inspire, encourage and mould ourselves and others into being greater than we ever thought we could be, especially when we are going through the dry seasons of life where nothing seems to be blossoming. I hope that we all will be able to find positive ways to cope with life’s challenges, wandering wildernesses and shifting sands, and that we will lead by example giving inspiration to the youths, middle aged and elders.
Each one of us can implement ways to improve how we handle the ups and downs of daily living. We can be the instruments of change that we envision ourselves to be, doing whatever we can to move ourselves and the community of souls on Anguilla forward. May The Most High’s divine grace continue to bless all of our lives and encourage us to live more righteously!
Kay M. Ferguson is a free-spirited writer who composes word sounds to inspire and uplift humanity. She is passionate about sharing her contemplations on various subjects to raise conscious awareness in the Anguilla community and globally. To link with Kay, send an email to anguillawriter@gmail.com or “i-nect” via social media at www.facebook.com/kaymferguson.
