Parinama

Our lives are confined now.   Because of the virus for many now there are fewer places to go, more time at home, fewer social interactions.   My confinement makes me feel like I am eleven years old again.   It is the late seventies and on Saturday morning the entire long day is open before me with so many possibilities.   I have nowhere to go and nothing to do that I do not choose to do as the day unfolds slowly in the rising heat.     I run out the back door passing my mother in her house dress sipping a milky cup of coffee and smoking  a Kent.   Her presence in the house, cleaning, cooking, smoking cigarettes or watching TV gives me the ballast to roam the town during the day.   Having a place to go home to makes the outings and adventures possible.   But I don’t know this yet.   I am only happy to be heading out into the sun in my shorts and t-shirt, my favorite red high tops and a blue bandana pulling my l...

Kindness has gracious eyes; it is not small-minded or competitive; it wants nothing back for itself.   Kindness strikes a resonance with the depths of your own heart; it also suggests that your vulnerability, though somehow exposed, is not taken advantage of; rather it has become an occasion for dignity and empathy.   Kindness casts a different light, an evening light that has the depth of color and patience to illuminate what is complex and rich in difference. John O’Donahue To Bless the Space Between Us   Those I am closest to I know the least.   The space between us the largest.   I can feel a gnawing pain of not being closer, a yearning to stitch this gap together so that I might know and be known more fully.   It can feel like bad luck to have been born into a family where I did not fit easily, to be distant from those closest to me.   But as I mature in my spiritual practice, what I see also is that the spaces between us come into relief on...