Reflections

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back into the earth; for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas. -Rainer Maria Rilke, from In Praise of Mortality My dreams lately have been inviting me to enter into dark and uncomfortable places.  We have such a fear of darkness in our culture — a denial of death and a resistance to the work of grief , as well as resisting the gifts darkness offers to us.  I am slowly realizing that this is in part what my time at this cottage by the sea is about — moving into the literal growing darkness of the

About five years ago I had the privilege of witnessing a pod of humpback whales in Alaska.  They were bubble feeding which is this marvelous choreographed effort, where the whales swim in a circle to create bubbles and disorient a school of fish.  Then the whales dive down deep and then come straight back up out of the water with mouths wide open catching a mouthful of fish.  Watching them dive and rise I felt their longing and was lost in their beauty. Last week I read a post at Velveteen Rabbi about embodied trust which has lingered in my imagination.