“The Invitation” – Oriah Mountain Dreamer It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your…
I’ve been practicing my meditation each morning, and after meditation I can truly say that I see clearer, hear better, and feel more relaxed. I’ve been using an app – yes an app for meditation – called the Insight Timer. A friend walked by the other day and out of the blue, was admonishing me for wanting to build a house – “You can’t do this! You better not do that!” – and I smiled…
I got my lab results and for the first time in a year my thyroid levels have normalized. I can’t point to one thing that made that happened, but I can point to everything. I went through the last many hours in a seminar on unlearning racism, the end of which has left me emotionally depleted. Along the way, several new people stepped into my world, and each of them was bearing a gift. Tonight,…
Without a dog attached to my hip, I am not motivated to go out first thing for my daily constitutional and so today after being in front of the computer for much too long a period, I got myself up and went for a walk. And of course, the path is different because I’m on this side of the bayou, which still has me sort of turned around in the car. And my gateway to…
I have this memory, which I have recounted here, of living in a shotgun house during periods of transition, which is where I find myself again. Only, this time is different; I’m much more aware of the fact that I’m in transition, that right now all things are possible, and that this shotgun holds moments of unbridled joy that have yet to happen. So it is that I have positioned a chair just so in…
I liken the multiple losses I have experienced in the past year or so to a death, which would make the last year of posts almost like reciting Kaddish for me. Kaddish is the prayer that Jews say for their close loved ones for eleven months after they pass and then it becomes a one year anniversary event. This morning, before dawn, I met with the Zen master teacher for Dokusan* at MidCity Zen and…
I was at Tin’s parent/teacher meeting today and hearing about his leadership qualities, his presence amongst the other children, his pride in a doing a good job, his developing to big boy duties, and what I heard the loudest was when they said Tin has the “IT” quality. This is something I have seen in him from the get go. He uses all faculties, charm, wit, intelligence, and talent to move everyone he comes in…
Wild Geese “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies…
Up with the chickens this morning, which means I got to bed on time last night with no distractions. I woke, meditated, and read the Sunday New York Times from a few weeks ago while I drank my one and only cup of decaf. It was dark outside. I then read a few pages out of The Power of Now. This stayed with me: To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and…
Since Tin first learned how to speak, he has called some things the “wup” – and generally this is when we are on the I-10 headed to Metairie. I’ve come to define wup as the guardrails, the sound wall barriers, and the big ass pump that is right before the cemetery, installed post-2005 Federal Flood. Day before yesterday, we passed the pump and he pointed and said, “The wup.” The wup is mysterious but lives…