Whale

This sunshine.
This contentment.
These sounds.
This coffee.
My parents.
This solitude.
This ache.
These fears.
This memory.
These things.
These desires.
These hopes.
These possessions.
These friendships.
this breath.

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Everything fades. Everything changes. I feel the vulnerability of that reality. It is not a pleasant feeling. That feeling also will pass.

When we take the time to grieve the ephemerality of all things now, we can enter more fully into the present moment appreciating everything it’s preciousness, each day with a little less clinging, each day with a little less attachment, each day with a little more loving kindness for all beings.

I don't know what to do. I don't know what will happen tomorrow. I don't know what is ultimately best for me. I don't know...
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Today I'm embracing the wonder of a life that inches onward without my permission. Today it's ok to not know what to do. Today, I can surrender to realizing I don't have the answers. Today I can be grateful for just today. Today I have help of the universe and all its friends to guide me into doing just the next right thing. Today I feel fu***ng uncomfortable with not knowing—and that's ok. Today I can be uncomfortable without reacting and chasing away the feels because I've been retraining my brain, like a damn olympian, to know that pain won't actually murder me. My brain tells me that pain is Walter White. My brain tells me that I should hightail it away from pain. But I get to tell my brain that I can wait. I can breathe. I can do this, even though doing this sometimes means doing it from my my knees, aching for relief and fighting for the hope of loving myself as I love others.
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I don't know what tomorrow will be like, but today I'm here, right now, showing up, as I am, liabilities and incredible strength and badassery. THAT I know.
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Oh? Never? That's what I thought.
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So I've been thinking about what our country is experiencing in this Kavanaugh hearing with Ford's story. We're so unaccustomed to being able to hold complexities and difficult circumstances and be nuanced about the way we handle it. We are raging and building walls. This is black and white thinking. This is dysfunctional.
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There is a man with a story, and we can hear him. There is a woman with a story and we can hear her. There are parts of these stories that should move us to personal inquiry, family inquiry, community inquiry — and action. There are parts of the story, reactions to the story from these two that we can take as information. We can make choices about how we want to live our lives.
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There are people in this country with vastly different experiences than mine. I can listen with curiousity. I can listen with empathy.
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What is unhelpful is deciding to create division between us and them. When we do this, we are judging, and we stir the judgment of others. The deeper call is to be able to practice the boundaries we feel convicted to hold while staying non-violent in our language and action.
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What happens when we even go further and decide to sit with those we disagree with and do something together, like break bread, or serve someone together? Maybe we can be quiet together?
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This hard path might not be appropriate for a victim who knows their boundaries won't be respected, but it's still possible to practice loving detachment where we aren't letting others anger and sick behavior control our reactions. We don't do it for them. We do it for us and for the hope that love from us will heal the lack of love we got.
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I think we're better than this. I believe we can gently encourage each other in this way. It's ok that this is hard. It's ok if it feels impossible.
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Oh? Never? That's what I thought.
-
So I've been thinking about what our country is experiencing in this Kavanaugh hearing with Ford's story. We're so unaccustomed to being able to hold complexities and difficult circumstances and be nuanced about the way we handle it. We are raging and building walls. This is black and white thinking. This is dysfunctional.
-
There is a man with a story, and we can hear him. There is a woman with a story and we can hear her. There are parts of these stories that should move us to personal inquiry, family inquiry, community inquiry — and action. There are parts of the story, reactions to the story from these two that we can take as information. We can make choices about how we want to live our lives. -
There are people in this country with vastly different experiences than mine. I can listen with curiousity. I can listen with empathy.
-
What is unhelpful is deciding to create division between us and them. When we do this, we are judging, and we stir the judgment of others. The deeper call is to be able to practice the boundaries we feel convicted to hold while staying non-violent in our language and action. -
What happens when we even go further and decide to sit with those we disagree with and do something together, like break bread, or serve someone together? Maybe we can be quiet together?
-
This hard path might not be appropriate for a victim who knows their boundaries won't be respected, but it's still possible to practice loving detachment where we aren't letting others anger and sick behavior control our reactions. We don't do it for them. We do it for us and for the hope that love from us will heal the lack of love we got.
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I think we're better than this. I believe we can gently encourage each other in this way. It's ok that this is hard. It's ok if it feels impossible.
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I'm enjoying getting into the rest and Zen of playing with clay, and learning to let go of having to be a master of all things. I have NO idea how to do a good handle for instance. It's good for my inner kid and good for these kids of mine.
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What's something you're learning to let go of? @ Hollowed Earth Pottery

Happy Friday folks. What are you grateful for today? Nothing smashes existential nuerosis like a gratitude list and the St Francis prayer.
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I'm thankful for recovery and renewed sanity everyday. I'm thankful for friendships with people who can hold complexity and grief and deep healthy love. I'm thankful that today I can let go of trying to trying to control the outcomes of some of my basic fears and needs. I am handing over these things into the care of the loving mystery. 🙏🏼
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Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace!
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That where there is hatred, I may bring love.
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That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness.
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That where there is discord, I may bring harmony.
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That where there is error, I may bring truth.
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That where there is doubt, I may bring faith.
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That where there is despair, I may bring hope.
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That where there are shadows, I may bring light.
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That where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
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Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort, than to be comforted.
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To understand, than to be understood.
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To love, than to be loved.
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For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
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It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
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It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.
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Saint Francis of Assisi
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I want to see the bigger, fuller, brighter, more robust, more potent, more vibrant truth. I want to eat the truth raw and make a mess chowing down like a child. I want to see inside the truth, and see inside that, and further in... until all I hear is the hum of all beginnings. I want to feel the feelings and know, they are not the truth—as real as they are. I want to feel them, and thank them, and sit with them like friends, and they can come with me into the truth.
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Ps. That quote is paraphrased. Thanks Tara, I'm thankful for you.
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As my body recovers from the third big sick of the year, I am aware of my mind and my heart returning home, like a mound of clay on the wheel being guided back to center. I’m reflecting on the story I was reciting to myself recently that was throwing me off, causing me to sway and toss. It was weighted with the language of failure and loss. I can still hear the off key words—broken, sick, and twisted—raking through my my listening mind. I can feel the brick of narcissist stick in my throat, unspoken, but waiting to curse myself with it. These are old words for me. They’ve grown up and grown fat and mean, but I remember them from the very beginning.
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With language comes abstraction. Language is the frame of perception of what simply is. I don’t need words to feel the in-breath, and to know the out-breath, but words are there because I’m a human and we are worders. We use words to protect ourselves, and words to surrender. We use words to unearth fresh understanding and we cling to words to avoid changing. We use words to tell a story about others, and we use words to tell our beliefs about our own story. As a photograph is only a frame of a moment from a particular perspective and not the unfolding truth in time, so no word-set is truly the story as it is.
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Yet, words can be helpful. Today I choose to use words that I believe set me right with the world, and train me toward my true self. Today I will thank the old words for their service, even if I don’t yet understand their work helping me survive. Today I greet new words, and welcome them to my table. Loving papa. Learning monk. Breathing man. Surrendering human. Waiting lover. Waking spirit. Hilarious goof. Hustling worker. Emotional guide. Boy becoming a man. Wounded healer. Healing wounder. I have both shadow and light in this aging handsome body. I am a mixture. I am a full meal. These words will help me see me more clearly. They are a little bit of light on the path.
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Still, in the breath without words, is where—I am.
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-negative

I've been moving through something deep, something heavy, something murky. It's been asking my name. Who are you? Are you enough? Do you matter? What will you do with this mountain of fear and longing?
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I've been sick again this week. A good indication that my body is out of alignment with what I need. All together, the effect is that I feel very emotionally and physically wrung out.
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I can practice mindfulness. I can do the affirmation work I've learned. I can stay sober and go to meetings. I can talk to the people who love me and care about my walk... But what do you do when it all feels like it's just falling flat and the ache is pounding?
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To me, this is usually when I am forced into a position of surrender. This is when I pray. Prayer from this position is not about me asking the Mystery for something I think I need. It's the cry if a man hanging from a cliff edge when all other needs fall away. It's a clear and certain "help, I don't know what to do". That's enough. In those words I join the poor, I cry with the outsiders and outcasts, I bleed with the leppers, I wait with the barren parents who've lost children or can't have them, and I feel the loss of all things with all people.
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I heard this quote from Tara Brach, who's becoming a real mentor. She talked about prayer at it's most whole, being a kind of call into a loving presence to connect. I want this. I want to connect with the mystery and so I have to let go of everything else.
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Designing for rest instead of frenzy
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