Mental Nourishment:

The world offers itself up to your imagination. Our job is to offer ours back.

I cannot imagine a more incredible world. We do not always combine the raw materials with grace, and more often than not, our combinations bring more grief than beauty. But each oak leaf, each eucalyptus branch, each plum blossom, and each fallen woodpecker feather is individually so incredibly perfect, that I cannot imagine a more incredible world to create with. 

I want to fill this week with creation. This blog, this moment, these words have never happened before, and perhaps I do not know. But my hands know and my heart knows, and today I want to focus on listening and acting with both. 

My hope is to hold each other with strength and tenderness, to remember how strong and capable we are, alongside how tender and gentle our hearts are. 

With gratitude and grief flowing through me, this poem created space for a shift in my heart. A friend shared it with me, and I love it!

The Dakini Speaks

My friends, let's grow up.

Let's stop pretending we don't know the deal here.

Or if we truly haven't noticed, let's wake up and notice.

Look: everything that can be lost, will be lost.

It's simple--how could we have missed it for so long?

Let's grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings,

But please, let's not be so shocked by them.

Let's not act so betrayed,

As though life had broken her secret promise to us.

Impermanence is life's only promise to us,

And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.

To a child she seems cruel, but she is only wild,

And her compassion is exquisitely precise:

Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,

She strips away the unreal to show us the real.

This is the true ride -- let's give ourselves to it!

Let's stop making deals for a safe passage:

There isn't one anyway, and the cost is too high.

We are not children any more.

The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.

Let's dance the wild dance of no hope!

--Jennifer Welwood 

Thank you for listening and reading, and I send wishes of love on the wind!