Easter exhale…

Breathing in tandem with the wind.

Easter Sunday afternoon, San Diego California. Gray blue skies, blustery day, pavement dry (mostly), rain expected.

My regular disciplined attention to the practice of crafting word to page has fallen a bit slack of late. It was the second Sunday of February and I stumbled on the way into the tub to be showered, fracturing my toe bone, an event that would go relatively unnoticed for the next 24 hours. Not that the two are so much connected, just a notable correlation.

Things have been something of a galloping adventure since then. One false start and then a more successful engagement with bringing a new care partner onto the team (care partner being, I think, a better phrase for caregiver.) I met a lovely new podiatrist, new to me that is, but wonderfully skilled and a delightful spirit to boot. (The toe is by now healing well and quite well healed.) I had the privilege of interviewing a bright young woman friend of mine on the threshold of new adventures; an interview that helps to launch the new season of her podcast.

Building on almost 3 decades of friendship with and appreciation for Ari, the beloved founder of the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement of Sri Lanka (translation, “the awakening of all through sharing the gift of effort”), I am overjoyed to be engaged with and supporting Richard Flyer to release his new book, translating that sacred work into the more “modernized” contexts of the world. I am just as delighted to have Richard formally on board as a member of our Wisdom Council of Directors for Open Field Awakening.

Speaking of the latter, as I have also been leaning more concretely and more fully into the work of that initiative, I have found myself expanding my network of friendships, both locally and around the world. Making these many new connections has proved nourishing for my soul and gives me new hope as these relationships weave themselves as nascent contributions to the mycelial web worldwide, lighting up the fibers of loving care that will be necessary to bind wellbeing in the midst of global transformation.

I feel like I’ve been waiting to write this letter for many years now. The struggle I have encountered, and the community that has come together to carry me through it has often left me yearning for some moment of salvation to declare, some reward for all the hard work, a light at the end of the tunnel promising an end to the uncertainty. The task of a personal economics in the face of disability has been relentlessly challenging, and with each new possible moment of success, there has always been some near miss; loss of caregiving, loss of health, loss of opportunity, to keep such a moment of salvation just out of reach. I have hoped and wanted to write something to the community of care at large to say, “your efforts have not been in vain, but we have at last passed through the eye of the needle…”

Though today I have no such material salvation to declare, no final certainty of success with which to reward those who have stood by with such sincerity and care, I have something that feels more meaningful to share.

But I get ahead of myself… Where was I? Oh yes, galloping adventure…

So my toe broke on 11 February; it wasn’t until Valentine’s Day and the beginning of Lent that that was truly discovered and brought into focus. It isn’t even until just now that I realize that this window has been the very window of Lent. This “galloping adventure,” a wandering in the desert, a sacrifice of hope and finding a certain redemption.

In March I spent a week in meditation retreat with Dustin Diperna and a renewed Sangha of practitioners from around the world. We trained our new care partner, Owen, in that time; perhaps an auspicious way to begin this new friendship. Professionally, I’ve taken steps to accept the offer of engagement as a coach to support clients in the Qineticare family of health, and leaned in with both shoulders to refine and conduct the offering of work through Open Field Awakening.

I’m sure this is but shadows of the true story, but let it suffice to share a blustering shift in my experience of life. And here we are poetically at the end of Lent and on the day of rebirth and I find space in my breath and this busy time to open my heart and say to the community of those who have been watching, thank you. We have come not to some longed for end of suffering, but rather to the place where the heart is broken open. There is very little struggle left in me.

Instead, I stand a bit naked and renewed, my faith is no longer so much in hope as it is in simple commitment to turn my heart, my hands, and my mind to the task of gratitude for and generosity to this world that I love so very much. In so many real terms, I have stopped the frantic searching and instead meet myself, humbled in the ways that I fail day-to-day, but certain, as though the dawn, that I will rise no matter the grace or hardship to revel in and reveal what gifts I may.

Saturday next will mark the formal initiation of an offering that has been incubating for the last decade and building momentum for the last 18 months. We will gather in ceremony with extended community (yes, you are most welcome :-), at the former offices of my good Dr. Mike and with prayers and good cheer, we will set this good ship a sail. The following week I will go back into meditation retreat to incubate that initiation into a full flourishing as the season of spring in our northern hemisphere comes to flower.

Again, I can’t imagine how much I have left out of this little narrative. I have met with three masterful doctors in this last window of time, each of them commenting on how very well I appear. Numerous friends and family have reflected similar sentiments. My body nonetheless feels weak, there is some condition that causes an incredible itch in my neck and shoulders (the part of me I can feel), digestion has been hard… Perhaps this is just wandering the desert.

The stormy weather which so often provides disruption in my sense of comfort, has been gentler of late in its effects on the body and I have been able more to appreciate the beauty and fullness of rain and wind and breaks of blue.

I marvel moment to moment on the good fortune of my endurance and the seemingly unquenchable seed of joy in my heart. With wonder, and often with patience I meet each new day, a looming list of things to do and so much unpredictable in the midst. Easter exhale… I have one week to prepare a small and symbolic offering in the storm and much to do, but somehow I find the breath to grant a little care to this ritual of writing, this discipline to which I was called by my good friend Charles, just a few words of love in an informal sense to any who might come across them.

May they grant some small balm to you my friend, and to those of you who have reached out on my behalf, none of this would have been possible without your care.

In love… In light… In rain…