“By yielding you may obtain victory.” Ovid

When the rural gets so green in Hawai'i at night geckos hurl scratchy volumes into the night and still they welcome you back to slumber. This far into countryside the irritating banal becomes melodic. Counting on insects, animals, and peoples to throw off screeches is customary now, five years into the listening. Where would I be without them? Is painful ear ache—too much noise and then too much silence—the only way to maturity? Nope.

Thus, forgiveness. On one tall slope above the two lane narrow concrete driving, one automobile must lurch to a standstill so the other can make the drive, over the narrow bridge, without collision, what we call placing the needle through the eye of a hurricane. Or what others might label forgiveness. Parking as a still-pause, motor running on the mountain rise, I yield. Patience is the cue on a laborious wait or kindness gifted to an anonymous roadside soul.

On green lawn next to ocean boulders a mermaid woman stretches prone at ease and gracefully wild and quiet as ocean water churns salty then mild in a river chute. She I wished to whisk away in my car, or maybe she waits on the hill in her car where I have yielded to drive on through. Nifty u-turns can park us together further down the road, on the same side, where we say hello, aligning my body and hers on green-green country grass. 

Sunday morning at Keokea Beach gathers country siders. Lemon lime crushed ice in a compostable bowl, coffee with protein infused plant-based creamer, one preschooler hoards chips from his friend's supply, face painting as a way to say goodbye to ancient hues and hello to new skin, and a first year  baby needs her mother's breast still, the bearded guy sits on a surfboard dangling in ocean waves in case others need help, and a woman mostly dressed in dull beige for land work wears a vibrant flowery skirt casting color in the day as a disco ball does at night—bright oranges, yellows, greens, and blues while walking up the hill to picnic benches. I yield in forgiveness as I walk down.

Yielding forgiveness forgives.

Later on this one same day, maggots hived on a baking sheet that stored slime too long in my apartment oven. Water and soap are prep to bake pepperoni pizza, 20 minutes at 375 degrees burning past the frozen. Thirty five years ago (roughly 1987), Melody Beattie told us how in Codependent No More, How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself. Sounds like yielding to forgive. Reason why ten years prior Thomas Harris writes I'm OK—You're OK, The Transactional Analysis Breakthrough That's Changing the Consciousness and Behavior of People Who Never Before Felt OK About Themselves.

Maggots, like too many words in book titles, are service to remove excessive anything and when I found them in the kitchen, in the oven, where I bake, I said thank you for assistance and I am good now, yielding to forgive. Remember that when a cow leaves a pile, next a fly leaves eggs, then maggots appear in a few days, delicious ones that chickens eat to make tasty eggs for you and I.

Didn't you read Sue Monk Kidd's When the Heart Waits, Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions? Gentle nudge to go source a paperback. She writes so helpfully because the “point was that although darkness in the spiritual life has gotten a lot of bad press, it sometimes yields extraordinary events” (151). Emphasis mine.