creative living ~ conscious choices
Over my outdated corded landline, my dear friend, Berta read me a poem she translated from German. We are keeping distant as she’s 96 and can suffer from weakness in her lungs. I can’t recall the exact words but it was a series of reminders repeated over and over. They were paradoxes. Never forget our uniqueness AND what we share; our isolation AND our connection.
Continue reading “over the phone”
The desire to hoard, to stash away, to buy what you can for yourself at the detriment of others is an unfortunate extension of the ‘winner takes most’ mentality on which capitalism is based.
Continue reading “Cultivating connection or just stashing away?”In singing high notes we are told, ‘To reach higher, you need to sense the depths’. We also need to be prepared to encounter all kinds of darkness, difficulty and challenge, to express what we lament or regret, as a source for our deep desires to reach upwards and outwards. Continue reading “deepening towards the heights”
These images of trees being supported in their growth moved me. Posted by a friend who leads creative tours to Japan, the attentive gardening practices in use touched me deeply. It takes a sensitive gardener to offer the support that’s required.
It was particularly the notion of receiving support which evoked a tender feeling within me. The desire for support has been particularly insistent lately, yet the longing to find a healthy and helpful form of peer support has been present for years. Reading of enviable practices in the book, Presence, a decade or so ago, I have been involved in support groups of various kinds. They have all been helpful but somehow I still didn’t feel the kind of ‘supportedness’ I longed for.
Continue reading “receiving support”
Change is what we’re here for. Transformation. Development. Our souls always sending out some desire for something new which leads us towards change if we let it. Or we bump into unexpected circumstances that require us to become more truly ourselves by leaving behind what’s old. Someone we work with or live with or love resists us or conflicts with us. A friendship blooms and requires us to develop something new. Or one fades. We fall pregnant unexpectedly. We visit a new town, city, country and decide to stay. And of course there are even bigger shifts when someone we love dies or a major catastrophe engulfs us. All of these require change. (I’m not even going to start exploring the signs of much-needed change emerging in our political systems).
Continue reading “do I really have to change?”
And as for loving those whom we experience as enemies, some counsel from Brother David Steindl-Rast here.
And yes, you can try this at home, at work and in the world.
