Moving from the Literal to the Beyond

I’ve been doing a bit of a social experiment throughout this week.  On Monday, I was walking with Scout and I saw this little thing on the path.  (Just for scale, it is about 1.5” - this is not a big thing at all).  So before you read on, if you haven’t seen my social media postings about this (or been in a group where I have asked people about it), what do you see?   

First, I’d love to hear in the comments what it is that you saw.  When I first saw this, my immediate thought was “it’s a little dragon!”  When I sent the photo to my family group chat, my wife and daughter both replied with the same.  But as I started to share this with others both in person and online I started to hear many more literal responses.  The top of a piece of celery.  A plant growing out of the asphalt.  A leaf.  A banana peel.  And then I heard something really insightful.  One woman in a small group on Tuesday noted that it depends on whether we are just looking for the literal or something beyond.  She was absolutely right.

Some of it might be the language of the ask.  “What do you see” is a pretty literal question.  But what about something like “what do you see in this?”  Or “What does this evoke for you?”  Or “Moving beyond the literal, what does this look like to you?”  I am sure there’s other questions as well, but those are what stir for me today.

But moving beyond just this photo and this experience...how do we open ourselves to move beyond just the literal, beyond just what is on the surface, and seek to understand what is deeper?   In our relationships, it is easy to just jump on what is on the surface, what is in the impersonal text on a social media post, or in the soundbite chosen by a news editor.  But what is deeper?  What is beneath the surface?  What is beyond?

There’s a poem by Rumi called Out Beyond Ideas that speaks of this to me.   

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn't make any sense.

David Wilcox and Nancy Petttit have a beautiful musical sharing of this poem:

There’s something beautiful that can emerge when we can start with the literal but be willing to move beyond, to move deeper, to see a leaf, a small bird, a tiny dragon, a banana peel, a praying mantis, celery, a peace sign, a mustard seed sown on rocks, or an oasis in a barren landscape with hope breaking through.