Blessing

This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.

A poem by John O'Donohue

Ann Patchett Essays

I. These Precious Days

II. My Three Fathers

III. How To Practice

Ken Nwadiogbu

 

Boom

My Brother

My brother is sharing his life story as it relates to work on a substack that explores how to move people and their wealth in order to effect positive social change.

The beauty and power of his story, as well as his capacity to be vulnerable and share it so widely as an act of service to the greater good, is a testament to the life Mike has led up to this point.

I am one proud and inspired sister.

A Triumphant Finale

The culmination of this series is tremendous-- wise, tender, funny, painful and full of love:

What began as sex education became a master class on family and relationships.

With a magnificent soundtrack to boot.

Time Between The Fingertips

Informed by these podcasts, my thoughts have been circling the concept of time. I want to capture some of this language while it is fresh for me...

The Greeks spoke of chronos and kairos. Chronos is ordinary time, calendar and clock time, measured and organizing, progressive and chronic. It is the time of our 2pm self. Kairos is extraordinary time, moments of disruption and inroading that can last an instant or centuries, liminal and acute, timeless and mystical. It is the time of our 2am self. 

The Greeks also spoke of apocalypse by which they meant uncovering, veil lifting, revealing, the bright clarity born of approximate endings. Apocalyptic time is thus a form of kairos time-- when there is a collective or personal experience of before/after. A pivot. An opportune time for rash decisions and plot twists. 

Time is fundamentally transformation and we cannot grow or change without feeling our own breaking. Tragic time. No creation without destruction. So we are born anew in times of vulnerability and vulnerable in times of rebirth-- when we have a keen and newly awakened sense of our own fragility.

And yet, as any Brené Brown fan knows, vulnerability is the gateway to love. Thus our breaking open is a great softening. A surrender to universal and specific, mundane love. 

Mortality entwined with love. Both core to the human condition. A condition that comes with the capacity to go in and out of our bodies. Our leavings, a grace granted by the push of suffering. Our returns, a grace granted by the pull of connection.

No self composed.

Old Art

 

These life-sized giraffes carved into rock in the desert of Niger-- gah! I still remember when I saw images of them for the first time in a National Geographic Magazine as a kid.

I can only imagine what it would be like to marvel at this neolithic masterpiece in person.

It is estimated that the petroglyphs are between 6,000 and 8,000 years old. A Taureg community living nearby is now tasked with protecting the remote site's historical legacy from vandalism.