This weekend's quest(ion) comes from the end of yesterday's post. First, remembering Rilke from Monday, the task is to get small, to connect with "the things we belong to" -- each stone, blossom, child. Then, inspired by Rachel Carson, sit with an issue -- in your family, community, city, country -- that has been weighing…
The themes this week have been learning through experience (sitting in the middle of a forest, arms wrapped around a tree, waiting to experience what comes), and observing with one's whole being, with the heart. Those led me, not surprisingly, to this weekend's "quest" -- Practice For 20 minutes, sit yourself somewhere in nature, or…
Imagine this: your teacher brings you to the middle of a forest and tells you to hug a tree. He says, “Stay here until I come back,” giving you no information about how long he’ll be gone or what you’re supposed to do, what you’re supposed to learn. So you sit, arms wrapped around bark,…
I've been sitting with this question, trying to open to (per Rumi) what will happen instead of planning or trying to direct what I will find in meditation. I ran across this quote, an epigraph to Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones, and I felt it articulated something I had been encountering -- the "eye" of…
Simple and Forgotten Things 