"By God when you see your beauty, you'll be the idol of yourself." — Rumi

I am propped up on a cozy, orange bench, a fire is going. My layers can’t seem to warm my too-cold hands. My fingers are dry against the smooth keys of my keyboard and there is a layer of polymer gloss that remains on a couple of my fingernails—remnants from a current project, one that is living in me like a child waiting for delivery.  I’ve come to this place once again where I may anchor my soul back into myself, back onto this beautiful and complicated planet. My tendency is to drift in my mind and with my body into the realm of daydreams and desires, like a balloon caught up in a dance with the breeze.  The fluttering around of all that I am imagining and even all that I must do sheds off of me like a skin as I sink back down into the more weighted place of present moment awareness. Typing with eyes closed now, the neurotransmission of my mind become both softer and more rhythmic. My breathing slows and my shoulders uncurl. I am safe. There is time. When I sit down to write, I never quite know what will come to the page but I know that it will draw roots out of me and intertwine me back within the earth.

I recently was the recipient of deep-listening, a process in which I shared a burden and those around me graciously took in my story and then eventually mirrored my words back to me. It is quite simple and yet, not something we can count on in the current pace of our society today. I love to take in and examine faces. My brain does not always work perfectly when it comes to remembering names, but I make a practice of memorizing your eyes, the way your brow is shaped, how you breathe. And when you speak, my attention is one part on the words you share and another part is experiencing you, your energy, your existence as a miracle of creation. I recently read that the probability of our being born—each of us, exactly as we are—is just one in 400 trillion. When I look at you, I remember this about you. It is not hard to see all that is unique about you even as you describe to me your seemingly common concerns, your challenging weekend with the children, your desire to start exercising again, your wish for a greater sense of community and safety. The gifts of the spirit are sometimes spoken to us in the very softest, faintest sounds of a whisper, and we must listen intently in order to decipher the direction to go. And yet, as I look at you, I am left breathless with the realization of how many magnificent creatures there are to love.

The water itself is like a mirror this morning— a house across the way reflected precisely in the bay it sits beside. I just keep sitting and being here with this new moment, and the next and the next, experiencing my breath and sensing what it means to accept oneself, to access compassion for our very own, deeply recognized challenges and flaws and come to a place of noticing, as well, of the many, many ways in which our essence—that which we all inherently are made of—is good. As I breathe in, I come to a place of wonder, as I breathe out I release judgment. No matter our age, this day, this life is still young.