Seeds germinate. Roots push into the muck. They draw sustenance from this muck, and push that up and into stalks and buds. Here, in this garden, my family blossoms. My love blossoms. My beloved blossoms. My life is shaped. And here, too, all of it withers, dies.
And, coming up for air, coming through practice, feeling held, I am so grateful for this practice!
Alders, kissed by a moment of April sun, and only for as long it takes me to do a short meditation, opening red buds into a green haze of fresh leaves high in the forest. I sit and see it all, and am on the edge of tears. My heart breaking for joy.
...my history with women –and especially the women I've loved– is a history of avoiding the wisdom that comes from this surrender. Avoiding. Or, as I am realizing, actively resisting.
It's easy to say I want the good and the beautiful, but they are sisters to chaos and unhappiness, ugliness and dis-ease.
Without this distance, it I would be in constant commotion.
Patience. Slowing down. Allowing the art of this moment to arrive... in its own time, its own way. There is no hurrying this art.
A Crooked Path to Sacred Marriage
As someone who works with couples who want to wed, I also observe that the coming of Spring marks a passage into the "wedding season." Here, in the Northern Hemisphere, it is a good time to reflect on the rituals and ceremonies of the season that relate to weddings and marriages.
The universe is big.
Every step is a risk.
We dance to improvise a bridge, a merging. This is the art of it all, to persist in this always-failing improvisation.
Success, however we define it, is a moment.
Above all, I want to rescue myself from my impatience and my fear and my doubt.
...and —just for moment!— we are connected. It takes a moment. Then the tsunami crashes down and I am torn apart, confused, doubting, struggling...
There is magic all around us. We need only become more sensitive to experience it.
For most of my life animals —mostly dogs, some cats— have helped guide me.
Today is my mother's birthday. A good day to wonder about the circumstances of her birth and how they shaped the girl she was, the woman she has become, and how that has shaped me.*
Her changes are not only frightening, they are beautiful.
...there is no certainty, except my commitment to follow the path she shows me.