The work presented here represents an intentional practice, both to engage and hopefully refine the skill of writing for beauty’s sake, and to make some sincere gesture of generosity of that same beauty into the world.
While the previous paragraph feels rich and true to this author, it leaves out the vicissitudes of practical experience where the practice meets a sense of “task-ness,” and degrees of fluency and struggle, success and failure to achieve a quality of result come into play as what appears in the world.
This practice started years ago with the promise simply to draft 100 words per day and share them with a mentor who was encouraging me to write. It has grown from there, and today I often spend a number of hours, though the publication is rarely very edited, and often mostly stream of consciousness.
Today, for reasons I will describe, I am picking up the proverbial pen late in my deadline and striving to produce something of meaning within a concise timeframe of just one hour.
We shall see…
I lingered long in bed this morning, as I have been doing for a few days while vast quantities of antibiotic course through my system, fending off a likely UTI which threatened to put me in the hospital yet again last week.
When finally I pushed through the fog to rise and made my way to my desk, I found just a few minutes remaining before my intended attendance to the ceremony surrounding the untimely passing of a beloved friend of one of my communities.
Putting aside a late breakfast and coffee (which would require the busy attendance of caregiving) I entered into the space of reflection with a gathering of folks from around the world.
For hours after the engagement my eyes and soul remained damp and porous with liminal sensitivity to the fragile condition so close at hand across all our scales of life and work in the world today.
I have felt myself a microcosm of this threshold sense of anxiety, grace, hopefulness and terror, confidence, commitment, vulnerability and surrender for a number of years now. I have reached out to friends and family and found myself met in community, not rescued from uncertainty and struggle, but held by the incredible grace and immeasurable value that it is to be loved among others.
Upon what feels like endless cycles in that time (since mid-to-late 2019), I have often hoped that just around the corner I might find some more stable place for my feet, some emergent history of clear narration leading from loss and departure back to hearth and home. So many have come forward to care and I only just wanted to return that reflection with some news that their efforts have brought us to salvation.
That is not the story, however, that lends itself to the telling. This has not been a Hollywood romance, adventure story, or some hero’s journey (though often I may have wished that it were.) The only ground I have found to report, is that of the eternal continuity of loving that flows from one to another, weaving a web of care and support within which we are born, held, and through which we pass away.
In the spirit of the original practice, I had hoped to write today something simple and practical, something materially descriptive of light and temperature, conversation, touch, and feel of passing through a day in the life… Not so it seems…
The story remains one of uncertainty, oft fragile, and yet filled with heart. The ceremony of remembering, feeling, and discovering today brought the immediacy of tender lives into the context of a deep looking into the world and reaching out to bring more care into it.
Last week I spent a day in bed, after numerous days of tepid health. The following I was fortunate to have regained my strength in time to enjoy the company of a global friend passing through town. My nature and habit is to “work” every day without breaks in the week. I have long pursued Life as Art and as such seek no respite from the work of that craft. Indeed, even laying on my back in the grass to feel the summer sun on my face is work of a kind — opening deeply to the appreciation of life’s gift itself.
Particularly in this time where finance, care, and health have remained volatile, and often loomingly absent, I notice acutely when “too many” hours or days go by without some leaning in to build in those various dimensions. Two days is a lot just now. I am walking a thin line between feeling behind and feeling held.
To be met with death in community and coming together to re-member the feelings and transformations it brings arrived today for me as a sacred wind lifting my wings up from fear, anxiety, and a sense of lack, back into the world of loving, of caring, of envisioning and sharing the tender terrible beauty of what it means to be alive and human today.
The past month has been one of devotion. I have devoted myself to nurturing and feeding and expressing only that which meets the razor’s edge in my mind of practicing some generosity and service in the world. I have done so, intentionally leaving behind an otherwise persistent search for financial capital from which I have had little respite for these years.
I have been met with what feels like a true gift. As I mentioned in last week’s post, I have found my way to meaningful and generative dialogue. Thresholds begin to emerge from the mist, thresholds of potential collective engagement towards deeper service. I have learned stories of real vision, and been touched by truth telling most severe.
I have been gifted with an opportunity to bring my meditation practice into community and Sangha later this month. When that appeared fragile — the simple financial ground upon which I would need to rest to attend was not evident — a spontaneous act of kindness from another with explicit intention paved the way just a little further on the other side. This practice of turning to awareness in order to shed any harm from my nature remains of pinnacle import in this life, however it may arise.
I begin to feel I am running short on words.
In the last day, I have found my way through the bureaucratic maze of public benefit to find a new vista unlocking a potentially great windfall seeming likely to knock off double digit percentages from my monthly financial burden. That context can be so challenging, that I hesitate to believe it until I can look back in the rearview and find it has done its job as advertised, but I share here the spirit of hopefulness and optimism that it feeds in this time.
There is much I have to do in the coming days. Hopefully those good tasks will bear fruit and nourishment for others in this hungry world. The path beneath my feet remains ephemeral, but maybe, in a sense, I am learning to fly…