All fall, maybe even back into the summer, my cat Grace was on a mission to get me to pay attention. Grace has been training me for some time to get on the floor to pet her. To show her affection is to be directed to relocate yourself to the floor where this taciturn creature will suddenly open up and quietly purr, luxuriating in your presence until she is moved to lovingly, and painfully, bite your fingers. She’s so soft that it’s worth it, until it isn’t.
Through the summer and fall months, as I was taking the critical first steps away from my life of all-work-all-the-time toward something new, Grace would lie on the floor of my prayer/meditation/yoga room, next to the meditation pillow and wait for me. I mostly noticed her as I was racing past the door, bustling about, doing one thing and then another. She would look at me expectantly each time. After a while, I began to snap back, “I know, Grace. It’s time to sit still,” as I rushed to the next thing.
The first time I went to Maui two years ago I tried to convince my beloved that we could, that we must, move to Hawaii, because on Maui, I am healed and whole. So when we returned this January (only for a week, not for good), I showed up ready for the next round of healing and wholeness.
My son, who spent most of a year on Maui doing environmental clean-up following the destructive Lahaina fires (in August 2023), now had loads of recommendations. Among them was to visit the summit district of Haleakala National Park which he described as, “easily one of the most magical and unearthly places I’ve been.” This from someone who has hiked thousands of miles, driven across the country and back again, and summited dozens of mountains, including Mt. Whitney and any number of “14ers” in the Rockies and other Western US mountain ranges.
This is how I found myself winding my way up up up from the warm sunny beaches to the chilly misty rockscape that is Haleakala’s summit. In a time of transition I was seeking something magical, mystical, amazing. I was ready for the mountain to speak to me, heal me, call me. Let’s go!
First, it was cold. I knew it would feel cold relative to the balmy perfect beach below, but it was like being back in the Bay in the wintertime. At the summit it was colder. Also it was foggy, just like home, damp and cold foggy. Sometimes I could see the ocean below, but mostly not. And it was rocky, not easy joyful hiking, but watch-where-your-feet-are hiking. Also it’s “at elevation” (as my mountain climbing son says), so there are warnings about altitude sickness everywhere, which made me hyper vigilant about water and snacks. Finally, every hike is into the crater and out of the crater, down and then unfortunately up.
Undeterred, I stayed open to the magic. There’s the nene, the very cool looking Hawaiian goose. There’s an impressive view. I got my camera out, “Oops – it’s gone!”, because the mist has moved in. Here’s the informational display of what I would see were the mountaintop not enshrouded in clouds. Here’s what it feels like to be hiking up and up and up along the naked rocks in the cold, and now also in the rain. After two hikes, a wander around the summit, and a determination that I was not going to have enough time to look for the other endangered birds up here, I told myself that it was a perfectly good explore and time to give up on the magic and just take my butt back down to the sea.
Foolishly, and perhaps only motivated by a need to use the restroom, I made one final ranger-recommended stop at an overlook that was buried in cloud cover. I looked to one side and saw nothing. I noticed the only other people at this stop making their way to the other side of the overlook and shook my head at them but then followed. A man was leaning against a fence at the highest point, arms out Titanic style, while his travelling companion took a photo. That was enough to make me curious. I went over there after he stepped away to take a look. This is what I saw:
Finally I started laughing. OK. I have tried everything, and nothing is going to be revealed up here today. There is no magic. No message. No need to be this cold right now. So I leaned into the fence and closed my eyes, releasing my expectations back to the mountain.
A minute later, maybe it was two, I opened my eyes and this is what I saw:
Now the mountain had my attention; I just watched. A few minutes later:
I stood in awe watching the crater below appear and disappear again before my eyes. It turns out what the mountain had been trying to tell me all day is just what Grace had been saying for months. “Sit still, and pay attention.” Because when you do, all will be revealed. Like the cat, the mountain will open itself to you.
Philosopher-mystic Simone Weil wrote in Gravity and Grace, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. If we turn our mind toward the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.”
What is asking for your attention today? Can you sit still long enough to notice it, or are you too busy tasking or seeking? Sit still. Pay attention. Who knows what might be waiting for you.