Tuesday,snow day ,rain day,8 April 2014

. Sit and hear the wind in the dark forest

 

To dilate means to widen or open more fully and the purpose of experience, both through ease and pain, is to widen and open us more fully. The normal way we meet the world is full of bumps and bruises and noise that scratches up the heart. And yet, if we can endure and lean in, we are widened and opened to a depth that weaves the tissue of the Universe together.

The Dilation of What Seems Ordinary

Just now, it happened again. My defenses were down, my memory machine asleep, my dream machine tired, and so the mystery—which is always beaming in all directions—made it through. And the moment of clarity it releases is always like a return from amnesia. So this is what it means to be a person, how could I forget: To be alive, to look out from these small canyons called eyes, to receive light from the sun off the water and feel it shimmer on the common water that fills my heart. To listen to the silence waiting under our stories, long enough that all the vanished words said over time simmer up in a scent that, for a second, makes me feel journeys that are not mine. Till I surface before you with a stumbled sense of happiness. Not because I’m any closer to what I want, or even know what I want. But because in the flood of all that is living, I am electrified—the way a muscle dreams under the skin of lifting whatever needs to be lifted.

 

A Question to Walk With: What does it mean to you, to be a person? Ask this question of someone you’d like to know better.

- See more at: http://threeintentions.com/2014/03/03/the-dilation-of-what-seems-ordinary/#sthash.22UmSd6J.dpuf

Read these weekly reflections on The Huffington Post and VividLife.

Sooner or later, just by living, we are reduced to what matters, as so many things we thought were important and irreplaceable are broken or snapped like small branches in a storm. And somehow, we stand taller with less coverings. It is then we begin to feel gratitude, even though it’s hard to be grateful for what is difficult. In this regard, all poems are expressions of truth and gratitude.

 

I Bow To All

I keep telling strangers that

to be in the presence of those

with whom you can both share

pain and celebrate just waking

is the answer to loneliness.

 

Such friendship makes the shar-

ing of pizza in a noisy pub and the

standing in silence as the old oak

creaks all one could ask for.

 

In truth, this process of being

worn to only what is raw and

essential never ends.

 

It’s as if a great bird lives inside

the stone of our days and since

no sculptor can free it, it has to

wait for the elements to wear us

down until it’s free to fly.

 

 

A Question to Walk With: Describe a part of you that seems to be in mid-birth, a wing of being half-carved, and name one experience that is chiseling you free.

- See more at: http://threeintentions.com/2013/12/09/i-bow-to-all/#sthash.XvLKZaRq.dpuf

The word authentic comes from the Greek authentes. It means “bearing the mark of the hands.” This original meaning tells us that to be authentic mean being hands-on. It’s through our hands and through the life of touch and honest engagement that we learn and grow. 

Our Hands 

Sometimes, with no warning, we suffer 
an earthquake and have to remake the 
earth beneath us. Someone we love may 
leave or die or think us cruel when we are 
kind. Sometimes the tools we need break 
or are stolen or simply stop working and 
we have to invent some more. Sometimes 
it feels like we can’t get through. That the 
phone won’t get reception. And the com- 
puter gets all jammed And sometimes what 
gets through is partial and misunderstood. 
It is then we are forced to go barefoot and 
re-find our hands. Sometimes we are asked 
to drift away from the crowd in order 
to be found by what we love.