Vajra Vidya StupaThis spring I took the opportunity to go on a 7-day silent retreat in Colorado with a teacher, Susanne Marie.  I hadn’t been on a silent retreat that long and wondered what it would be like.  I’ve done vision quests before, and compared to 4 days and nights isolated on the land fasting, this seemed quite luxurious.  I would have shelter, a bed, and meals!

Silence can be intense, especially if we aren’t used to it, and I was surprised to feel like the retreat was actually not very quiet at all in the ways I was imagining.  Most mornings …

Transformation
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I was recently given an assignment to create a vision board of what I wanted to bring forth into life.  I love to collage and so I sat down with the idea of what I wanted to bring forth….the deepest experience of homecoming in the midst of life as it is, fun, play and vitality.  That sounded like an amazing a juicy collage.  As I sat down with my magazines and started looking for images, I felt a total block.  A friend who was also working on this asked me if I was in resistance to the assignment.  As I …

Transformation
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I was speaking with a colleague recently about a possible talk on suffering for their community.  It’s been a while since I had a speaking engagement and I found myself having one of those moments where you meet someone new and you each take turns saying something that really resonates.  It was a fun conversation.  I had to chuckle as I spoke with the friend who referred me to speak on this topic.  She said, “When I heard the topic was suffering, I knew exactly who could speak to that”.

I have been recently launched into another stream of learning …

healing
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This past week has been intense.  I was in a gathering the other night where we all checked in and as I sat in silence, I wondered how to name what was happening for me.  An image came right away.  When I was in labor with my first child, it became clear he had flipped upside down and was stuck that way.  From the moment we discovered his position, my midwives told me not to push.  Sometimes that physical urge is described as similar to the urge to throw up or sneeze, but with exponential intensity.  Try stoping that when …

Uncategorized
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In general when a child asks me a question, I feel a responsibility to answer their question with good will and honesty.  “What time is it?”  11:58 I might answer.  Specifically, when a person asks me a question shortly after I have already answered the question, I can get playful.  “What time is it?”  Now, I say.  Dinner time, I say.  Daytime, I say.

In our time focused culture we give a lot of power to the clock, to the ordering of the world in precise organized ways.  Time is a real thing.  We experience ourselves and others aging.  We …

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