In between, everything for miles that makes its living flying was up and out of the trees, and many with much conversation.  Skimmers talking incessantly about fishing, and laughing gulls laughing as if morning depended on the seriousness of their laughter.

We cannot be long in such natural Beauty and not remember that we are a part of nature.  If we really want to feel at home, that we belong, we need to be where our body feels and knows that we are naturally a part of this world.  There is no better place than outside on the morning of a moon-set and a sunrise to realize we belong.  And how can we make the experience of belonging a more tangible reality in our lives?

Reflection:  Between the moon set and the sun rise, there is solace for the soul.

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We learn that there is always forgiveness, that the late days of winter are about our discontent, our frustration, our attachment to a limited view. There is something so steady about the sun’s heat. It is a kinesthetic blanket of forgiveness. All growth is possible from it. How often do we look inward at our own sorrow, our own plight, rather than outward at this blanket of love that assures all equally of the opportunity of life. The dolphins down in the estuary are playing close to the shore in the sun-warmed water. They seem totally convinced of abundance in their lives.

What holds us back from experiencing life’s abundance is not that we are smarter than the dolphins, but that we make it more complicated. Where today can we find abundance in simplicity? Where are we needlessly hiding from the sunlight that warms everything?

Reflection:  Can I let the warmth of the sun on my skin remind me that forgiveness is a part of the natural order?

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When the outer landscape meets with the inner territory of friendship, there is plenty of sunshine and rain.  Life is abundant.

Reflection: What makes my relationship good in sunshine and rain?

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Reflection:  In the rapid blur of life, what most helps me stay conscious?

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I have always loved the rumble and rattle, the tension in the air as the plane pitches forward down the runway on take off. This sadness is like that joy. I have never known if that runaway happy expectancy is about my discontent with my normal place and being, or anticipatory excitement about what is to come. Or both. Either way, like that joy, this is a liminal sadness – being in a space between me and someone I love, between two continents, between two hemispheres. It is awareness that I want to be home. To be where the interior landscape and the outer world – the longing and what is longed for and what is – meet.

Reflection:  Am I able to stay with my emotions, even those that occur in a liminal space?

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No matter how diverse peoples’ backgrounds or what one’s work or purpose, weather talk is our true common language. A little quirky pressure front, like the one just now, may get neighbors talking that have not talked for weeks.

We no longer have a common religion, or civil politics, or universally celebrated cultural events to pull us together – to participate in and talk about. All we have left, maybe all we ever had, is the weather. How grateful we can be for weather’s variety and occasional bluster, its predictability and its unpredictability.

The weather gives us all access to a unifying human topic, and ultimately it may be the constancy of this topic that provides a conversational presence. In all its varied forms, presence is all the help we ever need.

Reflection:  How can I make the weather topic a way to more deeply interact with those around me?

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The deeper the wounding that caused the protective mechanism to form, the harder the defense is leave behind when its use has been outgrown.

I recently had dinner with a friend who has the protective mechanism of judgementalism and negativity. With these characteristics, he never needs to take responsibility for creating joy in his life, for being vulnerable to his own suffering. If there is always something out there to complain about, he remains impotent and does nothing to bring his own light into the world. His defense mechanisms have kept him stopped at the gate of life.

Reflection:  Am I stuck at the gate of my life or have I walked past my protective defenses into my life?

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The point is well-made, but it focuses the issue of de-tachment on polarities rather than the larger more complicated issue of passion without attachment to outcome.

Longing is part of our life force.  We don’t want to be detached from it.  But we do need detachment from the many things our ego attaches this life force to.  Giving up attachment to objects of longing is like giving up hope.

We hope too much if we are alone.  We are too hopeful if our hopes prevent us from seeing reality and possibility.

How do we embrace uncaring, giving up hope and aloneness and find love and possibility and the community that make these possible?

There are at least three ways that we get love, possibility and community.  The imperfection in each of the ways is what sustains the longing to get there:

• The way of God – devotion to a loving, caring deity.
• The way of service –escaping the neediness of self through service.
• The way of creativity – making Beauty through creativity – making meaning greater than and larger than oneself, the making of which connects us to something larger.

Reflection:  What is my natural path for moving beyond self to love and Beauty?

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What are we to make of the fact that the last thing trying to escape from Pandora’s box after plagues and famines was hope?

How is hope a pestilence? How is one optimistic but not hopeful? How is one open to life but not crushed by it? Giving up hope is a form of surrender. How is giving up hope a cure for our lives?

Maybe giving up hope (this surrender) is about giving up willful (ego-driven) self reliance.  Giving up hope is a letting go in the same way that we give up happiness in order to achieve it.  Happiness is not something we achieve, rather happiness is a byproduct of living an authentically meaningful life.

Maybe giving up hope (this surrender) is about accepting life on life’s terms, not fearing life’s woes, but also not living in delusion about them.

Maybe giving up hope (this surrender) is about giving up on one’s limited human power and knowledge and relying on the power of others, on the power of nature and on the power of the sacred, wherever and however the sacred is manifest in the world.

Maybe giving up hope (surrender) is about accepting our human frailty and that of others, but knowing that frailty is where the light, and hope that is cleaned of its willfulness curse, gets in.

Reflection:  Before the clinched fist comes the clinched m.  What do I need to give up?

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Then we are offered an opportunity to lose center.  Some small sleight by one who loves us, lies on the ground inside our heads waiting to be picked up and shaped into clay, maybe even fired into pottery, so that we could keep it in some cabinet for the rest of our lives.

This wisteria morning, azaleas have broken out in their absurd flames and for once we leave the inner lump in our heads on the ground. Instead we go outside and plant tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. They will need cleansing rain and compost, as our actions are to the old sleight we refused to give life to.

Reflection:  How might my inner landscape learn from the outer one?

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