Because

Me and my solar eclipse shadows.

A woman who cuts her hair is about to change her life.
― Coco Chanel

A few prompts behind

At the start of the day.

As we apprentice ourselves to the way of nature, we begin to understand that all of life is in a continuous cycle of giving and receiving. It is the honoring of this cycle that makes us feel at home in ourselves and in relation to the rest of nature.

~ Toko-pa Turner, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home

Many of us feel that longing to return, for a spiritual homecoming. This is not a return to some imaginary past when America was great. It is a return to a relationship with the holy and the wild that echoes the intimacy our ancestors knew, but also heals the wounds that severed us from the rest of our human and more-than-human kinfolk in the first place.

We re-member ourselves back into sacred relationship by responding with an open heart to the Holy Wild who calls us back into communion. It may feel like a series of odd synchronicities — a small bird who lands on the railing close to you and looks you straight in the eye for an instant, a sense of welcoming you can’t explain nor deny when you slow down on your daily walk and notice the saplings and crows as individual beings, or a feeling of being witnessed by other people who are walking a similar path of return.

~ from the Center For Wild Spirituality newsletter

Feeling loved

Izzy relaxing on my lap.  Because she trusts me enough to do so.

This I now know for certain: I do all of my growing during the times in my life when I am offering compassion to the parts of myself that have not yet grown. I never once managed to shame myself into a version of me I loved more (and trust me, I spent decades trying). As Meg says, “shame is never fertile soil for growth”. A better world is not created from a planet of people hating themselves, but hate’s opposite. Sweet community, I hope as you read this today, you can scan yourself, look deep within, and decide every part of you is good news. And I would love to hear about a time where loving a part of you that felt harder-to-love was the seed of some incredible shift.

~ Andrea Gibson, beautiful poet, from her recent newsletter

I know you’re out there somewhere

A communication from the spirits of the fortune cookie.

Everything in life is speaking in spite of its apparent silence.

— Hazrat Inayat Khan

All the love I have received—
its wordlessness
I hear in the sky, in the wind.

Rabindranath Tagore, from “Sickbed #27,” trans. Wendy Barker & Saranindranath Tagore, Michigan Quarterly Review (Fall 1999)

This tape will self destruct in five seconds

This morning just before sunrise.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive.

~Maya Angelou

A very long life?

Wave breaking on the shore at the Point yesterday evening.

One of the reasons that old age is so disconcerting to many people is that they feel as if they’re stripped of their roles. As we enter old age and face physical frailty, the departure of children, retirement, and the deaths of loved ones, we see the lights fading, the audience dwindles, and we are overwhelmed by a loss of purpose, and by the fear of not knowing how to behave or where we now fit in this play. The Ego, whose very sustenance has been the roles it played in the public eye, becomes irate, despairing, or numb, in the face of its own obsolescence. It may harken back to roles in its past to assert itself, but these strategies bring only more suffering as the Ego fights a losing battle.

As we learn to distinguish between our Egos — marked by our mind and thoughts — and the witnessing Soul — who’s not subject to them — we begin to see the opportunity that aging offers. We begin to separate who we are from the roles that we play, and to recognize why the Ego clings as it does to behaviors and images that no longer suit us. Stripped of its roles, the Ego is revealed as fiction. But for the person without a spiritual context, this is pure tragedy, for seekers of truth who are aware of the Soul, it is only the beginning.

Rather than wonder what new “role” we can invent for ourselves in the world then, the question that concerns us might be better put this way: How can we, as aging people, make our wisdom felt in the world? By embodying wisdom. We can find a happy balance between participation and retreat, remembering that while it is our duty to be of service if possible, it is also important that we prepare for our own journeys into death, through contemplation, quiet time, and deepening knowledge of ourselves.

~ Ram Dass

A Sunday twofer

A sign at the Point.

“Do billboard salesmen record their sales on charts? If so, who’s at the top of the billboard charts for billboard sales?”
― Ryan Lilly