Little loops

Perhaps the most useful thing I can offer today — most days, really — is to light a candle for the endless team working behind the scenes of my own consciousness.

I realized this yesterday, drinking coffee with my niece at the mall. There I was, fifteen again. That's all it took.

There's a candle burning quietly in my apartment most of the time. That must be why I light it day after day.

The hands-stretched-in-prayer is a good stretch for textile artists. It brings me back to the quiet center line of years of yoga practice and teaching.

The pink satin pillowcase my partner's mom just fixed is the same kind my own mom gifted me. It's the color of a kid who is cared for.

Little loops want to close. Things tend toward their own full circle.

Let them.

Sightlines

There are lines around what we see and what we don't. This has nothing to do with whether it exists.

Whether or not the cat took up space on the sidewalk didn't determine whether we saw her. The human, either.

Really seeing something implicates us in it. Another word for this is witnessing.

Seeing throws coins into the situation. Often more than we'd like.

It asks us to have a small shelf somewhere — a place where the existence of the other can go.

The street cat. The person sleeping in a doorway. The thing we walked past yesterday.

This just happened to me. A kitty on my block who seemed to see me back.

My gaze shifted. Now she's sitting next to me.

But I keep thinking about all the other homeless cats.

Witness Blessing

I wrote a blessing this week as I wrap up my Witness fellowship, honoring the tradition of Elie Wiesel.

It applies to all of us.

What we may be witnesses to ourselves, just as we witness the suffering in the world.

May we also be witnesses to our true emotions, the emotions that come with caring and truly seeing.

May we remember— as this fellowship has taught us — that witnessing itself is an act of love and the true foundation.

May we not force flowers, but honor the real timing of things.

May we not open the box before it is ready. May we find patience and grace in the deepest corners of our own darkness.

May we continue the slow plod in the garden, one step taken after another. May we honor real grief and real heartbreak. May we allow confusion to fill our cavities the way light fills a room.

May we not abandon ourselves. And when we do—— may we return quickly, and without cruelty.

May we stay with ourselves. May we practice awareness toward ourselves the way we have practiced witness toward each other.

May we be witnesses to our own transformation.

May we know that love is ours. That art is ours. That all of the tools and community are ours — and that is not changing.

And may we sit —

quietly,

in the stillness at the center of everything.