Where we might begin a story is a moving target.  Did it start with a particular moment?  And what moments led to that moment?  How does one decide where to locate the beginning or tell the story of the journey; the arrival at the next journey?  Does one start with the feeling of the new, or the small ending that gave rise to that feeling?  Or is there a way to speak at all what we know or who we are as the infinite present moment that is all of existence?  I suppose this is the unending quest of the …

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This last story of the year talks about the very old story of the birth of Jesus.  It is introduced as an every day kind of story; the birth of a baby, both mundane and miraculous.  The story asks us to look into the ordinary until we can find the truth and the magic within it.  As I reflect on this fall semester, I wonder at my own journey taking this teaching role seriously as practice.  The task itself is quite ordinary.  I prepare by reading the story several times and reflecting on it myself. I show up early on

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As I wandered more fully into my work to release old pain and open myself to joy, things slowly began to shift.  Over months I filled my journal, paid attention to my dreaming, walked and practiced yoga and saw my healer and my Spiritual Director.   It was like tracing a line back into the shadows or down into deep waters.  How far down would we go?  Where would it take me?  Would I be able to find my way back out?  Did I really want to do this?  I mean, I had lived without a full experience of joy for …

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It is the holy of holy days.  It is the day we wish would never come.  It is the long night we wish we didn’t have to sit through.  The light is in short supply.

I sit through this darkness, and lose track of my daytime senses.  I let myself dissolve into the void.  It is the coming apart before creation.  It is the letting go of everything I know or thought I knew.  It is the absolute blindness of not knowing what may happen next, or if, really, there is anything next.  To trust in this moment is a …

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” At Christmas, we celebrate the birth of things that save us.  Sometimes salvation can come as much from freedom and letting go as from creation.  What pent up wildness have you released?  How has that saved you or someone else” -Order of Service, Christmas Eve

 

Solstice, Christmas, New Years.  All of these holidays turn my introspective self even deeper inwards.  As I sat in the service Christmas Eve and contemplated the questions above, I was filled with gratitude.  I was overwhelmed by gratitude.  I’m not going to lie, it’s been a hard year.  It’s been a year …

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Dawn was obscured this morning by thick clouds.  The world lightened, but still the day is so short.  The cold is coming, the after effect of the dark.  When the light comes, even in increments, even in a dull gray instead of a full golden burst it changes everything.

I often meditate in the spring on the bulbs in the ground.  They are nestled in the cold and dark.  Every year the new season comes and coaxes them out of the ground.  What must it feel like to be immersed in the darkness and find yourself changing…your body changing from …

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