cooking....

Cooking is not a mystery.
The more heart we put out
the more heart we put in.
To bring cooking alive
we give our life. Giving
our life willingly we don't
get put out.

Washing cutting cooking cleaning,
finding ways to give life to our life.
Not knowing already how and what to do,
practice feeling it
out of what is not known
through the warmth and the anxiety,
not sticking to a particular way,
insisting it is the only way,
open to feeling out what is possible,
what gives life to our life.

To feel out our left hand, our back our toes,
to feel out our breathing, our movements, our stance,
to savor the taste of a radish or a fresh fig,
this is our freedom, this is our wisdom --
Spirit moves.
The mystery is that it is possible to do
what we don't know how to do.

From the Tassajara Cookbook

the violet.....

The small violet flower
hidden under the frosted leaf
ready to unleash spring.

Nx

Resilience........

I was walking with a dear friend today.

 She and I take these walks and, at the same time, we journey into the narratives of our lives. Inevitably and, always surprisingly, these narratives reveal intimate details about our relationships with the world.  We study ourselves by listening and speaking our most honest and heartfelt stories.

 Today, our narratives were about resilience and how intimately resilience is connected with unconditional confidence.The confidence in our ability to return to the original form after being bent, compressed, and stretched.

 

The confidence to take uncertain journeys deeper into the places of our hearts and minds. The places that sit unattended and unloved; well fortified with walls of avoidance. The places that we have chosen not to know about ourselves.

During our walk along the ocean this morning, we decided that how one is even able to court the idea of visiting these challenging places is the unconditional confidence in the ability to find the way back to the center. To have some assurance in your heart that you have the skills of focus and patience. The knowing that it may engage all of you and you will need your breath to stay and stand firmly, but you will survive this meeting with yourself.

 This confidence in the return....so that you can explore the gap between yourself and yourself.....and see if the gap is not extra...........this journey can not be accomplished without the resilience of confidence. ..the ability to find your way back to zero.

 What a precious slice of grace to find a human in your life who is able to be present......allowing a short visit to the place where your ability to be intimate ends.  A presence that challenges you to stand right in the spot where you can actually feel the little bit of you that you hold on to .....the place where you are now not sure if you are safe. A wonderful journey and encounter with the places where you keep yourself separate. 

Deep gratitude from me to you, my friend.

I am the child....

I am the child,
the birth,
the new way,
the inbreath,
the energy of life,
the surprise we all know about.

I am the joy spirit,
running and jumping,
trying to reach it,
singing outside your kitchen window.

I am the dancing child,
Watch me move in the air,
to fly and land
to fly and land.

Nx

A thin thread of breath....

The sadness in her eyes
as she polished her womanly shrine,
Her spirit resigned,
Her dreams modified,
This is how she would love God.

Nx

the spider......

Always in search of a new home
In the air outside my window.

Holding softly to the thin lines
of sun spotted dew
Throwing her bulbous body into space.


Intricately designed limbs
Perfectly folded beneath her.

She secures another refuge
in the evening's autumn air
outside my window. 

Nx