Parinama

  Swimming at the lake this time of year is precious.  The water is cold and bright and the forest is filled with the golden light of fall. I am chilled after swimming as twilight descends earlier and earlier. I sleep deep and long after.  Today, I swam in the lake where our family used to have a cabin.  A strong wind blowing in the new season whipped up waves onto the shoreline that was empty of summer visitors.  The water dark blue and cold was still inviting because the sun was still strong in the sky and I wanted to feel that soothing ease that a cold swim brings into my body.  Red, orange, and golden leaves made their swirling descent into the black waters.  I wanted to hoard this experience, my last swim of the season, not sure how I was going to bear its ending.  But as the waves lapped onto the shore, and the trees let loose their golden leaves into the black waters, I realized how the preciousness of this moment was made so by its very pa...

Silence is the key to freedom. David White, Consolations II Ten days into a 30 day Himalayan trek my mind fell into a deep quiet.  The chattering just stopped. Everything that was so hard and strange about the land and the trekking wiped my mind clean of its usual grasping for comfort and pushing away discomfort. There was just the walking step after step, passing stone upon stone, the teasing out a deeper breath from the thinning air, the ever present wind and grit, the majesty of the mountains.  Of her 2,700 mile trek across the Australian desert Robyn Davidson wrote that time disappeared and it began to feel as if she were standing in place as the earth moved beneath her feet. This was my experience of time and movement in the Himalayas.  The days of the week disappeared as did the hours in a day as I was with myself and the unfolding experience in the greater vertical depth of each moment. This is the freedom of a quiet mind free from its anxious ruminating thinking....

  In his new book, "Cherished Belonging", Father Gregory Boyle describes a way to healing and wholeness through communities of radical care and compassion. His beloved community is Homeboy Industries a place he founded where former gang members can find jobs, tattoo removal, and a way towards wholeness and repair through belonging.  When we are cherished by another, by a community, by a commitment, we can find our way to inner acceptance, repair, and compassion.  We all need cherished belonging to thrive, places where we are loved and accepted for who we are, with all our flaws and disappointments with people who are patient and generous.   In belonging, our hearts  find rest and are restored in the knowing that we will not be abandoned even when we make mistakes, again.   We can find belonging in families and with friends but also with those with whom we share an affinity like knitting, hiking, music.  There is belonging in our places of wor...