Pulling threads
Notes and news from the present moment, on its swift way to becoming past.
Happy Thanksgiving
What would an authentic practice of gratitude look like for you? Can we nurture natural gratitude without burying “non-gratitude”? Let's play with this idea!
Riding the Wave
Many feel this season and the next will be long ones. I hear resignation and some dread. I feel these things, yet, I also experience a glimmer of excitement for the deep inward turn that will come with winter. A time to dig deep into rich material, dream-time, integration and quiet creation time.
Late, Late Summer
For the month of September, the meditation circle which I lead has been working with a metaphor practice:
body as mountain
breath as the sea
sky — mind
This is an invitation to think / sense / feel into these archetypes of the natural world, to contemplate their qualities and notice how our embodied experience might echo them. The imagery is boundless, but we can start from here…
Beginning Anew
Like the fish circling a reflection of the full Piscean moon, let's turn our attention to that bright, shining mirror; see, how clearly can we see?
August Retreat
Join me August 17–21 for one week of morning meditations, a miniature self-retreat, in community.
Pause and Retreat
In many buddhist traditions, August is a time of retreat. I’m following that lead with a brief pause in weekly sangha, and a one-week morning retreat to reset our practice, later in the month.
Working with the Weather
This week I am thinking about the weather, and what a beautiful metaphor it is for the nature of mind.
Like the Garden Grows
My northern garden grows with such intensity in its short summer season, the transformation is so dramatic, winter seems like a story someone told long ago. I would like to learn from this nature…
Inclining toward Justice
Meditations on compassion, non-violence, courage, and transformation in the third week of global protest against racialized injustice.
Inclining toward Compassion
The work of antiracism is an inside job. It requires compassion-in and compassion-out…
Ever Beginning
In my ongoing exploration of meditation practice I return again and again to the buddhist concept of “beginner mind.” Forever and always, we are new to this moment. There has not been one just like it, ever before. This is true now, was yesterday, and will be tomorrow.
Can we remain curious and open to newness, and to our inexpertise?
Emergent Series
Through the month of April and into May, I have been drawing or painting almost every single day. Art-making is one of my responses to the upheaval and destabilization of the pandemic, staying grounded by observing what is, tangibly, going on around me. I am blessed to have my small art group egging me on.
