Happy New Year, Dear Ones.

What an incredible week this has been, no???

It has really gotten me thinking about the importance of stepping back and taking a nice long deep breath.

Stepping back and realizing there is so much we don't know.

Stepping back and recognizing just how important it is to take the long view of things...

I've learned that this is how I can find wisdom within what appears to be chaos.

At a meditation retreat I attended some years ago we had a conversation in our final session about the ills of the world and how they come to be. We were trying to identify the causes of poverty, violence, injustice.

What we came to see is that there is no easy answer to these questions - no simple cause and effect.

What we came to see is that everything is because of everything.

Today I am grateful for Unity.

For me it is useful to think of unity in terms of harmony.

As a musician, I love thinking about unity in this way. For harmony does not mean everybody is on the same note. Actually harmony requires us not to be. But rather, when two notes (or positions or viewpoints or ideas or desires) come together to create a vibration that resonates in a larger way - like how silent strings begin to vibrate all on their own when a resonant note nearby is sounded. I see this as a wonder, a kind of miracle of the natural world.

In this way, I am grateful for whenever it is that all my being is unified - body, mind and soul are in harmony, everything aligned and I am stand in awe with a deep awareness at the unity of all things. That despite however it might appear on the surface, this underlying unity of all things is an elemental Truth - and that when things don't feel harmonious it is because I have forgotten this, some part of my inner light having been covered over by doubt or worry or regret or judgement...

My Dear Ones,

Yesterday evening I had the most blissful experience.

Most mornings since we began our shelter-in-place lives I have taken a walk/run or bike ride to a beautiful nearby cemetery. The path takes me along a forest's edge, up and down hills. I've felt so very grateful to have had the good fortune to live in a place with space to do this safely, the proximity of my home to the forest, and the physical capability and wellbeing to allow this to be possible.

It has been a Godsend, saving me daily, keeping me healthy, sane, and in much better spirits than I might have been otherwise.

Yesterday, though, I missed my morning ride. So late in the evening as the sun was setting, I decided to partake.

It was that time of utter quiet as day give way to night...

It was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed..."

~ Thomas Merton (Trappist monk, theologian, mystic)

Dearest Beloveds,

I hope you will allow me to call you that.

Some of you I know intimately. Some of you are dear friends and/or long-time yoga or meditation students. Some have attended retreats or workshops with me. Some of you are family.

Others among you I may have only met briefly or are new friends. Some I may not have met at all, although we are connected here or on Facebook or perhaps in some other way.

And yet still, I consider you all my beloveds.

Things are opening up. Stores. Rec centers. Gyms. Work places. Beaches. Parks.

So tempting to just jump back in to all those things we've been missing.

So tempting to just hurry back to 'normal'.

But I find myself hesitating. Not knowing. Uncertain.

About so many things.

Firstly, of course, what is safe? For me? For others? For those I love and may come into contact with?

But just as importantly, what do I really want my new 'normal' to look like?

This time has provided us all with an amazing opportunity to really look at our lives. To become acutely aware of just which parts of my life are most important to me. Which people. Which activities. Which ways of being.

And I don't know about you, but I don't want to return to everything I was doing before.

December… the season of giving and receiving… such a sacred time.

In my college years I read a book whose title I no longer remember that spoke to the power of giving—and perhaps more importantly of receiving. We are taught lots about the value of giving, its importance and its value. We are taught that to give is holy.

What we are not taught so well is that receiving is equally important, equally valuable, equally holy. For if we do not receive, how can another give? So in many ways, in receiving—graciously, thankfully, with open hands and open hearts—we are gifting the opportunity to receive.

This is the flow. Without one, the other cannot occur.