Parinama

  We are creatures who do not get to choose between what we want and what is wanted of us, and we seem to embody the full vulnerabilities of love only when we dwell at the moving frontier between this wanting and being wanted. David Whyte, Consolations   Our lives unfold at the edge of “what we want and what life wants of us.” It is a rich and loamy place of possibility, mystery, and vulnerability.   When we engage with life as it is at that edge, we learn humility, courage, and faith.   We experience our lives as they really are and not how we hope they would be.   And with that clear sightedness can discern next steps with more equanimity.     For a long while I longed for a life that was easy, safe, and satisfying.   Where I would be free from anxiety, fear, and loss.   It was a fantasy but one I still hoped for imagining a cottage by a lake, work that gave me purpose but not stress, community of family and fri...

  What do monks have to teach us by their lives of poverty, silence, and solitude?   Monk’s lives go against the grain of our culture of striving, accomplishment, and accumulating.   They forgo consolations of intimate relationships, children, money, entertainment, and vacations to become quiet and still enough to feel God’s presence. Each of day follows the same slow rhythm of prayer and work, alone and together.     When we face loss, difficulties, and pain, our lives naturally become more “monk like”.   What offered consolation no longer suffices as grief brings waves of emptiness and heaviness. We become numb to what had previously given us comfort like food, work, relationships.   We are pulled into aloneness because of the burden of grief that cannot be shared. We are separated from the known world and unable to participate in life in the ways we had before.           Monk’s lives bear witn...