TENDERLY, I HOLD IT ALL

Apprenticeship to Love: April 10, 2026

TODAY'S MEDITATION

She tells me she is always impressed by me.... What gift is this? And then, to see her tears as she offers her bewildering tenderness... flowers from the mud.

In this moment of blossoming I feel myself wanting more. Now I'm getting in the way of myself, of what I need.

What is it that I need? Stillness, more stillness. The capacity to sit, and wait. To enjoy my solitude. To savour this time to let all of this settle, nourish. Not brush it away with my haste to want more.

...

I feel my own vulnerability becoming more acute. I am ever more tender and susceptible, with practice.

I'm getting better at knowing with unreasonable knowing, without words, the strange wisdom of my oracle. She helps me to feel the unseen buds of spring pushing through the mud that has been nourishing them for many, many seasons. Holding them and nourishing them, in the dark and wet and unknown.

I am –for a moment!– allowing myself to feel it all, the springtide I see, the springtide still rooting, still pushing, still being born. All of this feeling, it would all be "too much," but for my practice. I am deepening my own roots into the dark, wet, unfathomable mud of love and discipline I practice with myself. I am rooting myself, holding myself, feeling myself. All of me.

...

I am sitting in the forest. It too is so much. The huckleberries just beyond pink now blushing green amongst the fir trunks. 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.

I see all of this and feel my heart breaking open and I breathe, remember to breathe, to allow it all to keep moving, this feeling, these sensations, these visions. The one I love is blossoming too. She is moving through her mud, towards her sun, towards that powerful presence that holds her safe, holds it all. That presence unafraid of all she brings.

Are you sad? she asked. I do feel tears in my heart and in my throat. But not sad, no. Though it is another heartbreak, another opening to something unknown.

I am grateful. I know this much: I am grateful for this blossoming from the mud. Grateful to be feeling it all.

I am not sad, no. I am feeling it all and allowing its unreasonable beauty. For a moment, I am the sun.

TODAY'S INSPIRATIONS

🌀I understand now that I'm not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. I explain that now, when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, "For the same reason I laugh so often- because I'm paying attention." (Glennon Doyle Melton)

🌀One of the ways this ‘yoga’ has been practiced over the millennia is to connect with the magnificence in everything. Known as Raj Yoga (royal union), it uses rhythm and mantra, combined into what’s called ‘Naad’...a constant mantra in the mind. It delivers a sensation of vastness, of ‘headroom’ to each moment, a sense of being completely free. With this freedom, there are no blockages. You have the probability of every possibility. Ideas and solutions for each moment are inside of each moment...you’re virtually “unstoppable.”... (Guru Singh)

🌀I'm always impressed by you. (My beloved, my oracle and siren)