HUSBANDRY & GARDENS & TENDERNESS...

Apprenticeship to Love: The crooked path of sacred marriage (October 1, 2026)

TODAY'S QUESTION

The season is slowing. What are you feeling more of, as the leaves fall, the hours of light get shorter, as you are invited to slow down? What are you afraid to feel, when you slow down?

TODAY’S MEDITATION

It's still warm enough for me to be writing in my garden.

I'm thinking of how to observe a day of rest in my week. I often get busy. I know I don't slow down enough to notice what is going on, what I'm feeling.

Today, as I sit here I’m seeing the blueberry bushes turning orange. The unpicked apples at the top of the tree are slowly ripening to red. I'm surrounded by so many shades of yellows and golds, of flowers and foliage, of the sun warming them. I'm noticing that the Sumac is not quite so full of fruits as last year, and wondering whether this is true across my locale, and how this affects the starlings that usually descend on that one day in late fall to pick every berry from the tree?

I hear the Stellars Jays, nattering.

I hear the robins and sparrows and finches talking, much more discretely.

There's a familiar screech from a bird I can't identify, though I've been hearing this grating call all of my life.

In the background is the hum of my small city, waking to this morning. Overhead, a small aeroplane ambles across the blue sky.

I'm feeling tender to this world, and in my tenderness to all colours and sounds and smells of my garden I’m writing, again, about tenderness. My capacity to feel it in myself and others is growing. That's a blessing, to be more sensitive to life.

I am thinking about husbandry. The gentle intuition and amazement and "leading by following the follow," noticing and receiving the gifts of beauty and of love, and of the vulnerabillity of the woman I love. How do I attend thee, my beloved?

...

It never stops, this dance of husbandry. And, at least for one more morning this season, I am in the garden, aware. And enjoying all that life and love and beauty and tenderness offer me.

…

A few days ago I wrote about tenderness, and my capacity to feel into the tenderness around me.

I hear the longing for love in almost every conversation. For tenderness and trust and vulnerability. I also hear the sound of unwillingness to be tender, vulnerable, to trust. I hear about and, listening below the unhappiness, I feel the undeveloped capacity to know that this tenderness and this love we seek lies within our own bodies. I listen and I hear how hard it is to speak its name and how we don’t know, aren’t taught, how to hold each other, safe.

...

She gives me the gift of her tenderness.

Let me sit with this for a moment. Let me become slow and silent.

Let me sit and, slowed and silent, let me remember not only her vulnerability and her beauty, but it easy it has been for me to squander and waste what is offered.

Let me also remember that she trusted what she knew in me, with unreasonable knowing, but what I failed to know about myself: that I am capable of holding and revering her holy tenderness. Let me remember how she moved to close herself, to protect herself. Because I would not hold and revere what she offered me.

Let me be still, and slow. So still and slow that I feel my regret —and my willingness to do better.

Slowed, I know this: I am, now, ready and willing to honour and cherish what is offered to me.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS

🌀This empathy is so sensitive that life on Earth is often physically, emotionally, and mentally — even existentially — painful. This pain is relieved through service (seva in Sanskrit)….
Our prayer is that you remain in faith — you’re on the right path; have a daily practice that allows you to turn pain into a guidance system, not a hindrance, and recommit to the service of humanity each day. …(Guru Singh & Guruperkarma Kaur)

🌀I am beginning to trust “no expectations.” (My beloved, my oracle)

-Rev. Hans
rev.hans@sacredbodies.ca

▶ PS. NO-CHARGE FOLLOW-UP ON RETREATS AND WORKSHOPS
I have 2 free coaching spaces available in October 2026 for anyone who has participated in a workshop or retreat with me in 2025-26. If you would like to do a 45-minute follow up check-in please use this code INTIMACY2026 to book a session.