Your essence is gold hidden in dust.

To reveal its splendor,

you need to burn in the fire of Love.

…Rumi

on this, my birthday, life lessons seem trite and yet the unfolding and intangible beauty and despair of the rain and time are potent images that shift perspective and reanimate the longing for truth….may this day be a reminder to hold lightly with grace…….

Look at the birds.

Even flying

is born out of nothing.

The first sky is inside you,

Friend, open

at either end of day.

The work of wings

was always freedom,

fastening one heart

to every falling thing.

…Li-Young Lee

the empathy within struggle

With each way of listening, we are asked to invoke another aspect of courage. With each depth of listening, we are asked to keep a vow beyond what we already know, a vow beyond our awareness that reminds us that each moment is yet to be lived. And so, knowing others have wanted to move the world and were forced to accept how the world moved them; knowing others have suffered too much and that some grow dark while some weaken into bliss; knowing thousands have called out to God in their most private despair long before we were ever born; knowing the wisdom of silence and water has received them all; knowing the spark we call love has made hard men soft and determined women reconsider; knowing the withholding of love has sent flowers into exile no matter how bright the spring; knowing the long breath of one star consumes a hundred generations; knowing how little and how much one speck of dream accounts for; knowing how common the weight of having to make do; knowing how much is at stake, it is imperative to close our knowing, as a cliff diver closes his eyes, and live…as if no one has ever lived…..Mark Nepo