{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual inspired by Soulemamma. 

A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Confetti Heart

“Eternally, woman spills herself away in driblets to the thirsty, seldom being allowed the time, the quiet, the peace, to let the pitcher fill up to the brim.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh – Gift From The Sea

I read these words and recognise within them my own self, as it is perpetually dribbled away into a million different needs and deeds. I feel sharply the sliver of resentment belonging to my wild gypsy self, who longs to give herself fully to the dance, to the work of art, to the concerto, to life. And is instead taught to be happy with creating only small wonders who may go on to become great masters in time. Is this all a mother is? A spinner of the threads of a future miracle? If so, that’s not a bad thing to be. And yet, surely beyond the sculpting and tender nurturance of these warm and splendid mini-selves, there must be something that belongs only to us? Something deeper and more profound than spilling ourselves away, droplet by droplet into others?

As I ponder my hubble’s suggestion to take a sabbatical, to retreat in the face of current difficulties in order to find my equilibrium again, I wonder if I know what peace is. Would I know peace if it came up and greeted me with flowers? Hell would I know it if it bit me on the ass? Probably not. I know what peace is not. It is not waking up with a tight jaw and aching eyes after a night of restless sleep. It is not this knot in my stomach or the nausea that comes from living with my shoulders as ear- muffs. It is not hearing myself laugh and being shocked at how alien it sounds. No. That is not peace. Peace slips in under the coat of solitude, holding quiet by the hand.

The Attraction of Distraction
Many of us spend a good deal of our time disappearing into different distractions so as not to find ourselves alone in a room with silence. Or worse - ourselves. There is tv, movies, books and music and all of these are noble and enjoyable distractions. We can pick up the phone, get online, text or message each other in an instant. If we don’t have someone actually with us, we have something in our ears or our hands or our mouths. We are contactable at every moment and we are available to each other instantly. And therein lies the problem. There are so many opportunities to be busy, to be distracted, to be involved but there are few opportunities to be quiet. Few opportunities for stillness. In fact, given half an hour of quiet we will fill it with a hundred necessary and important things and never even notice the glass of ourselves slowly emptying until it reaches the bottom and we are still required to give.

I love a good distraction as much as the next girl. I can easily lose myself in books or movies or even music. And yet, despite the almost constant thread of resentment at the level of sacrifice required of me as a mother, I spend my time looking at yet more ways that I can give to this little being. It’s as if I am searching for any hole in my psyche through which the ‘perfect mother’ can slip out. Surely, if I can bake the bread, or offer the milk or cookies, or make the doll, then I am one step closer to digging out this recalcitrant mother within. If only I can become the nurturer, the creative playmate, the laughing, relaxed mamma I know I can be, this depleted, worn out soul will be renewed. And so I continue to seek avenues of nourishment for this little soul I love so much. Is it martyrdom? It certainly can be. But it can also be simply what mothering requires. A slow disintegration of the self in order to have room to birth and hold and shelter these precious little beings. No wonder many new mothers are shell shocked in those first few months. Or, if you are me, few years.

I realise that I am not a natural nurturer. I have resisted domestication like a feral cat. I have chaffed at the bit of commitment until my mouth is bloody. Yet all the answers I seek, all the avenues I am currently exploring to find wellness again, are not for myself primarily. They are for her. For my beautiful, golden-haired Beanie girl. So that I may give freely and not feel poorer for it. So that I may lose myself and not care so very much about what is gone. So that I will stop trying to find and stick together all the little coloured pieces of my beautiful confetti heart.

I know she will be a masterpiece. I know, on all the levels that truly matter, she is my greatest work.

Yet I still hold dark dreams of a self that lives only for itself. That creates purely for the joy of creation. That follows the wind with a glad heart and a radiant smile. And who knows peace as a good friend.

Who’s with me?




*Photos from here
and here.

The Challenge of Acceptance, The Art of Nourishing

Storms

Have this playing as you read this.

I would love to come to you healed and say that all of your words had made a difference. They did. They do. But they do not undo, unknot, unravel the many shields of my self. I am deeply grateful for such kindness as has been shown to me and ever humbled that people whom I will most likely never meet, have taken the time to share their experiences, offer wisdom and advice (all of it good, sound advice) or to simply 'be' with me for a moment. It has been unexpected.

I am feeling a little less 'Noir'. There are moments of light, laughter and happiness - of course there are. It's just impossible at this point to tell what is going to happen next. I am, for once, not anxious to 'fix it'. I am allowing the 'what is' to visit and not feel like I have to escape from it. I know that I have been touched by some sort of sadness that goes very deep and that will not let me loose just yet. No matter how much I struggle against its silky grip.

I'm so tired and so weary to my bones of trying and getting nowhere. I'm so tired of never living up to my own expectations. So tired of always falling short and getting up and trying all over again. And so I have decided to stop. Not stop living obviously, that would be stupid. Just stop striving all the time. Stop trying to sit on my anger at the expense of my passion, my joi de vivre, my soul's yearning to be heard, to be free. Of course, it is easy to say and not so easy to do. Not so easy to 'surrender' when one does not know how to bend to the prevailing winds. How do you describe the act of surrender? What does letting go look like? Feel like? How do you know when you have achieved it? And what of anger? My anger is a part of it all too. I have yet to learn how to express my anger in more appropriate and manageable ways. I have sat on it for so long, all of my life really, and now it wells up at the slightest provocation and is destructive to the one person I want to protect from it more than any other. And yet. I don’t know how to let go and it’s not something anyone else can tell me how to do. How do you explain the process, the art, of surrender to someone who does not know what surrender feels like, what being empty feels like?

I have always known what I have to do. (Have to?) I have been searching for a way but seem incapable of actually doing it. Incapable of finding that middle pathway between self-loathing and self-love, between anger and passion, between nurturing others and nurturing myself. It was quite the revelation to discover that I don't trust myself. I don't think that I know how to.

My acupuncturist, Aisla, is an amazing and intuitive woman. Today, as I dissolved into tears in her office (yet again), grateful for just a moment when I could be 'me' and let the overwhelm come and not pretend to be on top of it all, to be coping, I realised that this is who I really am. This tear streaked, overwhelmed, oh so tired mummy who wants so desperately to be a good mummy and not a bad mummy all the time, who wants so much to be all that she hoped she would be as a parent, but isn't. This is it. This is as good as it gets. At least for now. And in her office, for those few moments, it's ok. Or at least, if not ok, ok that its not ok.

She sits her needles into my skin and they crawl or throb or itch and then she asks me what I think that I do well. I am quiet for a long time. Then I realise that I can offer her nothing. I can say nothing good about myself. Find nothing good to bring forward for us to talk about. 'That's very telling.' She says in her quiet way. 'Your inner critic is dominating. You need to bring out your inner encourager.' Yes. I'm sure I do. But what I need most of all is to let it go. Let go of the striving for constant perfection (especially when I don't know that this is what I am doing). I was moulded for the challenge, for the winning of battles, for being the best at stuff and honestly, it pretty much came easily to me. I didn't fail that much. But I did get scared of making mistakes. I don't know how else to play. So now I sit with the knowledge that this parenting, nurturing thing may be one battle that I cannot win. And why is it a battle anyway? Surely these things should be soft edged and soft focused and easy, not iron and unyeilding and frosty. If the way is hard, if the road you are on constantly brings you back to the same stiff, cold place of hatred and angst, then you are on the wrong frigging road. You'd think that would be obvious wouldn't you?

But its not. It never is. We can never see the beauty that stares us in the face or the courage we have in the face of adversity, when we are the ones doing the looking. I am well aware that this applies to me, of course I'm too busy looking at you.

It's not that I want to be someone else. I don't. I do sometimes entertain wild fantasies about being somewhere else, but I don't actually want to be someone else. Unless that someone is Cate Blanchett perhaps or Kate Bush. I'd trade lives with them for a day. But then I'd want to come back here and be me again and cuddle my girl and hug my man. So no. It's not about that. It's about not knowing who I am. It's about not being able to find something lovable, something bright and good and inspiring about myself to offer up to this life. It's about truly not understanding what about me makes this path so bloody hard when I have so much love to give to it.

If I abandon everthing to a single moment,
then I reach you.
O light-hearted beautiful of the world,
give me that heavy cup.

Give it,
and then I'll be saved
from sorrow and helplessness both.
I'm so tired of feeling oppressed by anxiety
and all of anxiety's troublesome friends.

give it to me,
for then I'll be drunk with God's glass
and be annihilated completely.
I'll open my wings in absence and fly away to the placeless place.
RUMI

I have spoken before about the process of 'becoming'. And it is to this that I want to surrender. I have no choice really because what I am doing is breaking me into a million tiny little pieces. But how? How do I reach into the deepest still beating part of my heart and bring it forth into the light? How do we touch that little part of ourselves that is Divine and allow it to lead? I am so used to putting my intellect before my heart. My mind over my body. But thinking has brought me to here. Again and again. There is no thinking my way out of this.

Nurturing
And what is nurturing?
I can tell you what it is not. It is not driving yourself daily to accomplish the impossible. It is not running like a greyhound around the same well worn track after the same scabby rabbit who is always out of the reach of your snapping jaws. It is not trying to make yourself something that you aren't and never were. But I cannot tell you what it is. I could reel off some trite magazine worthy observations about 'time for you' like having a long soak in a hot bath (my bath isn't long enough to lie down in - why do they not build them with a sodding head rest for Gods sake?), or taking a mini-break (not when you are mini-broke), eating well and getting enough rest. But then what if you don't cook well or just simply don't enjoy cooking? What if your rest is held entirely in two chubby little hands over which your deepest desire to get a full 8 hours have no dominion? What if you truly don't know what nourishes your deepest self? What then?

Nurturing does not come naturally to me. I've said this before. I can't tell if its because I'm lazy (as I sometimes am) or because I am just lacking in energy and inclination (does that class as lazyness?). Right now, with so little time and energy and freedom, it feels like I have nothing left to give. I am having to learn about nurturing myself and my family one day at a time when I thought that it would all come so easily to me. I realise now that I simply don’t trust myself to be a good parent. I believe in instincts, just not mine.

* Sadness & Light

Acceptance.
So in this place of 'no trust' I sit. In this place of 'self-loathing' I wait. Inbetween these moments of sadness and light, I open. I wait to accept myself and this and it. And I know that nothing can truly change until acceptance seeps as deeply into my skin as the striving I wear like a tribal tattoo. I am unravelling and it feels raw and frightening and my skin feels blistered with all my shattered hopes and dreams. What comes out of this blistering darkness I wonder? I guess there's only one way to find out.

'Some hearts are ghosts and they drown in dark waters,
just as silt grows heavy and drowns with the stone.'

The Devoted Heart

*Fire Woman

Well, with temperatures increasing again towards a scorching 43 degrees tomorrow - we are girding our loins, packing our bags and heading out of the hills to the relative comfort of St Kilda beach. The horror heat along with the forecast 100mph winds are definite bad guys in the war against bush fires and we are in no way prepared to stay and defend our property, hence our decision to get thee hence! When I say 'willing' I actually mean we have no credible fire safety plan rather than being prepared to stay and fight fire with, well hopefully, water. Besides which, our house feels like its on fire even when it's not - we have no air conditioning, a fractious toddler and a whinging pom (that would be me then) to deal with, so it's really best for everyone concerned if we stay away for the day.

As I completely buggared up my back last weekend and then had the chiro add insult to injury on Thursday, leaving me in great pain and in need of ice packs and a babysitter, I am currently about as flexible as the mummified remains of an episcopalian priest. This adds to the desire to get the hell away from any potential fire lest I become good kindling. Tomorrow is also the St Kilda Festival and that is very definitely another reason for leaving my home and heeding the call of the Siren of the Sea.

So - I am currently bubsy free (and missing her a bit if I'm honest) and am likely to be so until tomorrow morning. I know that I whinge a lot about wanting some time off from the crazy path of motherhood and then, when someone kindly obliges, I miss her horribly and fear that I will never see her again. I had to have my Bean fix, so I called up nanna and had a long discourse with Beanie about the relative merits of hanging up washing with pegs and a book that had a cow and a duck and a horse and a duck and a sheep and a duck in it. It was delightful. I'm a very lucky woman even if I often feel like a Banshee in dire need of prozac.

My darling Docwitchy is going through a tough time right now which has come unfortunately swiftly upon the heels of extricating herself from another tough time. My love goes out to you dearest rose of my heart. Remember to breathe and take it all one step at a time. It is often better to let go of the ultimate destination and simply trust in the step that is currently being illuminated.

Apart from the heat, the aching back and the sadness of dear friends, I am feeling more centred than I have in a long while. Mothering often produces more downs than ups for me and I end up in this giant whirlpool of regret being sucked under by guilt and by my concern about my ability to parent Beanie well. I know that regret and guilt are self-defeating emotions but it doesn't always help to know that. If that makes any sense. I am, more often than I wish, a not very good parent. I won't go into long boring detail about it all. I've said it all before. It just seems that despite my understanding of why I do what I do, I am still unable to prevent myself from doing it. Knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing.

This morning, after the first uninterrupted nights sleep in a long while, I meditated not once but twice. I immediately felt calmer and more present. It reminded me of my desire to connect more readily with Spirit and to really fully awaken the Divine within me. I have often said that it is not a matter of changing who we are but of becoming who we really are. I like that idea so much more than the idea of having to become someone different from who I am. It's not that I won't change, it's more that the changes will not be enforced upon me from outside of myself - like squeezing myself into an ill fitting shoe. Unravelling is really where its at. Peeling back the layers of 'stuff' that accumulate upon one's soul and around one's true heart. The layers that mask our true selves from each other and very definitely from ourselves. I sometimes think that my heart is like a ruby covered by dirt and dust and leaves and 39 years worth of misunderstanding and hurt, shame and confusion. Every time I meditate, I feel like I start the process of lifting some of that debris from around my jewel bright heart. I start the process of allowing that heart to breathe some love into me. Of course, I often ignore it completely and find myself too 'busy' to meditate or find that something or someone pops up to prevent it from happening. I think that maybe this is just an outward sign of my inner resistance. I have to be prepared to do it anyway. To take this time to reconnect and to find my stillness and my breath and my ability to simply surrender to the moment, no matter what it contains.

Parenting takes us so often away from ourselves. From our needs, our desires, our dreams and our creativity. It need not be this way. I mean, of course we have less time to devote to these things and to ourselves, but we do have time. We simply have to reclaim it from the myriad of things we lose ourselves in or that we think just cannot wait. TV, reading, tidying up, browsing the internet, writing emails, texting, answering calls - all of these 'needful' things seem to interrupt the flow. We can take back 5 minutes here and 15 minutes there until we have an hour or more of time that we can call ours. Nap time and after bedtime are really good times to try and do something creative when your babies are still small. As they grow in independence, so does our time for ourselves. So even if you can only find 15 minutes in an average day, take it for yourself and use it wisely. Meditate maybe. I write down anything creative as it occurs to me in a notebook I carry with me for this purpose. It helps. I forget less and it doesn't matter if I get distracted once its written. Anyway - that little bit of time for myself this morning helped a lot. I had a bigger smile for strangers and a gladness of heart that is not often present. And of course it made me miss my Beanie very much. I wanted to share my happy heart with her and to show her that sometimes mummy can be very, very good. I think its time I started my 5am vigil again. Time to once again let the Beloved in. What have I to lose except my chains? And what might I yet gain?

* In the arms of The Beloved

When you find yourself with the Beloved, embracing for

one breath,

In that moment you will find your true destiny.

Alas, don't spoil this precious moment

Moments like this are very, very rare.

Rumi

* Fire Woman Picture courtesy of Fire Fairy

*'In the Arms of the Beloved' picture courtesy of Cheryl Alexander Creations

I hear my tribe calling to me as leaves fall like green rain from the oak beside me. I will answer that call today.

May your caravan carry you safely back home to the beloved.

30 Days of Happiness - Day 8

Happiness is...


A good fire in the hearth on a cold, wet, Winter's day.

I have a bit of a thing about the element of fire in general. Perhaps I was a pyromaniac in my last life - tis possible. I find that just having a fire in the hearth makes me feel somehow more positive about everything. Like a cat, I gravitate as close to it as I can get without getting paws burnt or whiskers singed. I long to simply curl up and stare into its dancing orange flames until I am absorbed. In my post, The Stillness We Seek I have talked about a deep spiritual experience that occurred while fire gazing. I love that if you look hard enough you can just make out the dancing Salamanders, leaping lightly from log to log in search of more flame to consume. I (figuratively) want to be consumed by it too. Like the Phoenix, I long to be reborn from the ashes, cleansed and renewed.
Can you see the Phoenix in the flames?


My favourite evening is one in front of the fire with a good book, a cheeky glass of Merlot and some choccy.

*Note to the Sod's Law Fairy - I DO NOT want to be caught in a fire, have my house burn down or otherwise be involved in any kind of unwanted fire shennanigans!

In and Out of My Mind

*see end of post
Today is the day I do my radio show on 3MDR 97.1FM. I am on air once a fortnight on Wednesdays between 3pm and 5pm - around abuot the time all the mummies are picking up their little kidlets. Today's show is on Oriah Mountain Dreamer who I am enormous fan of and who I have mentioned on more than one occasion in this blog. Listening to her on audio, as I have been doing recently, is like taking a long walk through a silent, rain soaked forest. She has this quality of stillness about her that I just love. I can feel my muscles relax and my spirit sit up and take notice. This is an amazing feat in itself, especially as I am so often 'Hi, I'm currently out of my mind, please leave a message or call back later.' I have often said that if all the tension were taken out of my body the rest of me would simply dissolve into a pool of slightly sticky regret. I am, by my own admission, a little neurotic, a little over-anxious and more than a little stressed. But that is, at least for now, just how I am. I'm learning to be ok with it. I am also fervently hoping that in my spiritual unfolding there will be a way for me to reach back into the woman I really am at the core of me. The one that is unperturbed by external circumstances, the one that loves deeply, rests well and embraces the 'now' fearlessly. Oriah, who seems to have lived in my skin, is my way of reminding myself that I have choices, that I can choose to simply let go and 'be' without worrying if the dinner will get made or if my daughter will wake up for the fortieth time in the night and need me. I can, at least for a little while, be ok if she does. This is why I like her so much.

My chronic tiredness continues unabated and has been joined by the evil little fuckers that are insomnia and restless leg syndrome. Neither is a welcome bedfellow. Insomnia snores and farts under the covers while I gasp for a wiff of the cool still air of dreaming and Restless Leg Syndrome makes my calves disco dance all night long. They both have me tossing and turning like a demented swing dancer. I HATE not being able to sleep. It adds insult to over-tired injury and makes me crankier than a whore past her sell-by date. And yet, I still have to get up, take care of my child, cook nourishing food and make time to write and run my business, when what I would actually like to do is fall into a sleep to rival Sleeping Beauty's and kick the living shit out of anyone who dares to try and wake me. I am NOT a morning person. In fact, I very rarely feel like a person at all. Not sleeping really is a torture and its impact on mind and body are very much underestimated in my humble opinion. I am a good deal less fun to be around when I have slept little and I am a lot more likely to forget to do important things like locking the door (or even shutting the door on one particular day), putting on my seatbelt, checking the straps on the car seat once I have my beanie strapped in, making sure I take my keys with me. That kind of thing. Beanie also gets the rough end of a very sharp tongue. Not good.

On the good news front I have emptied out our extremely messy store room and created in its place a lovely jewel of a meditation room. I hope to drag my sorry carcass from the warm cocoon of bed at the ungodly hour of 5am in order to get some 'omming' in and some writing done. It looks amazing. Filled with the smoke of copal and frankincense which always make me feel like a priestess in some ancient temple. I have lovely sari covered indian cushions to sit on and a soft blanky to wrap around me for those cold mornings. The altar is an oasis of peace which I can choose to stare at or ignore depending on my mood. (well, actually, I know exactly what sort of mood I'll be in but I will persevere nonetheless).

Post Script:
I'm back and I really must stop drinking coffee, especially instant coffee (which I never normally drink). I haven't stopped twitching yet. I drove over to the station looking like this... and totally rocked out to the Black Eyed Peas. Let me state for the record that one should NEVER listen to the Black Eyed Peas if one wants to arrive anywhere even remotely sane and definitely never on a weird coffee high that has already lasted for more than 5 hours! Nescafe is evil and must be punished. Still, fun drive though. Felt like a total badass and everyone needs to feel the funk occasionally - even if they are nearing 40 and wearing tracksuit pants and ugg boots.

The show went well I think. It's difficult for me to really be objective about such things as I'm a horrible perfectionist and never feel that I've done a great job of anything. However, it seemed to go ok and I am still a newbie at this broadcasting malarky and one must take that into consideration (something that I rarely do!). I actually really resonated with Oriah's suggestion that one can sacrifice something like perfectionism in favour of wholeness and would like to try that for a while and see if it helps.

More damper. Yes. Now please.

Anyway, I'm anxious to go 'Slow Down and Let Go' in my meditation room. Ha! Anxious to meditate. There's an oxymoron if ever there was one. So I'll leave you with a thought.

Beauty is the doorway to silence.

Like I said, please leave a message or call back later...

* the image at the top of the post is of two hand carved bangles by Jessica Cushman and can be purchased if you've a spare $130 knocking around. I wish!

The Stillness We Seek

I was lying alone on the huge sofa in the living room of my boss. He was overseas doing what Shamans do and I was taking care of his house and looking after the business. I had built a fire in the huge hearth and, as he had no television, had been listening to Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. The CD had finished some time before and night had fallen but I had been too busy staring at the theatre of fire to notice. It was so quiet. I became gradually, dreamily aware of a strange sensation growing within me. It was unfamiliar and yet not entirely so. I felt calm in a way that I had never experienced before and yet I knew this place or at least, I did once. This vast stillness expanded inside me until I knew only peace, only safety. I felt as if I were lying below the surface of a fast moving river. The surface of the river was covered in dead trees, leaves, debris from the banks and fields around it and I had a strong sense of knowing that life was like that debris. Lifes troubles, struggles and woes were like the flotsam that floats on the surface of the water but our truest nature, our deepest self was like the current that moves strongly but slowly beneath the surface. I knew in that moment that no matter what my life held, no matter what unhappiness I felt pulling at my heart and mind, if I could just remember this feeling of being held safely in the strong, slow pull of the deeper current of my life, all would be well. It was as if a voice had spoken to me from deep within that silence and stillness and said simply,'This is truth. Remember it.'

I'll never forget that experience because it is a place I long to revisit. I had never before and, even more sadly, have never since, felt that peace, that simple reassuring stillness in which I lay that night. Maybe I have simply never been that still since. I know that I am someone who finds it hard to be quiet, I move almost as ceaselessly as I talk. Even when my body is still, my mind is burrowing into ideas, issues and problems like a fat childs hand into a candy jar. I never really stop. Hell, most of the time I never even slow down. I throw myself into bed at night like a big man might throw a dodgy hitcher out of his still moving car. There is no stillness apparent. Yet I know it's there - not even out of reach just out of mind. And, even more frustratingly, I can often feel it hovering on the edge of my consciousness whispering to me, 'Slow down, be present and feel the hard edges of life melting away. Just flow on down stream.'

What was most magical of all about that night was the ease in which I found myself there. There were no months spent meditating, no soul-grating suffering in order to achieve a place of mindfulness which comes before peace, no tearing apart of the fabric of my reality in order that I might find 'truth'. There had been nothing out of the ordinary happening in my busy life except coming to terms with the ending of yet another unsuitable relationship and my tussling with the feelings that accompanied that. If anything, that should have really kept me way off centre and far away from any experience of peace. And yet, doesn't Rumi talk about that 'broken open place' within us and how through simply being with that experience, that rawness of spirit, we might reach God. Certainly, I have learned more about myself when I have been split apart by life, alone and sorrowing into the darkness, than I have by attending any number of workshops designed to enlighten me. All I know is that despite myself, my never ending mind chatter, my ceaselss, restless spirit - I attained a state of grace that night and felt safer in my life than I had ever felt before. There was a feeling of inexplicable happiness that accompanied it all. Not the jump for joy, wave fist in the air type of happiness like one might find on a tv commercial for tampons, it was like the smile of the Mona Lisa - mysterious, yet no less heart expanding.

I think it must have been listening to Oriah Mountain Dreamers 'The Call' again that brought it to mind again. The idea of surrendering oneself to the stillness and the silence at the heart of life. Of actively listening but without trying. Of becoming with all that 'trying' to change. In this place of grace I am loved and accepted, exactly as I am, with all my armour on, with my head a mess and my heart jagged and sore. I didn't have to be anything other than myself and I got there by being just that - me. The challenge is in remembering to be present IN the present. In remembering that 'doing' often prevents us from 'being' and in following the thread of our breath, in and out, until we find ourselves lost in the beauty of an open fire and, ultimately, found again.


This aloneness is worth more than a thousand lives.
This freedom is worth more than all the lands on earth.
To be one with the truth for just a moment,
Is worth more than the world and life itself.
Rumi

May stillness fall softly into your hearts like snow and stay there long enough for you to make snow angels.