When we cry out Help, or whisper it into our chests, we enter the paradox of not going limp and not feeling so hopeless that we can barely walk, and we release ourselves from the absolute craziness of trying to be our own- or other people’s- higher powers. Help. We can be freed from a damaging insistence on forward thrust, from a commitment to running wildly down a convenient path that might actually be taking us deeper into the dark forest. Praying Help means that we ask that Something give us the courage to stop in our tracks, right were we are, and turn our fixation away from the Gordian knot of our problems. We stop the toxic peering and instead turn our eyes to something else: to our feet on the sidewalk, to the middle distance, to the hills, whence our help comes- someplace else, anything else. Maybe this is a shift of only eight degrees, but can be a miracle. It may be one of those miracles where your heart sinks, because you think it means you have lost. But in surrender you have won. And if it were me, after a moment, I would say, Thanks….Anne Lamott

this is the gift we often try to give back….presence and the surprising little sweetnesses….like ice cream and hugs and memories and innocence……these gifts counterbalance the rift between love and us….

I keep telling strangers that

to be in the presence of those

with whom you can both share

pain and celebrate just waking

is the answer to loneliness.

 

Such friendship makes the shar-

ing of pizza in a noisy pub and the

standing in silence as the old oak

creaks all one could ask for.

 

In truth, this process of being

worn to only what is raw and

essential never ends.

 

It’s as if a great bird lives inside

the stone of our days and since

no sculptor can free it, it has to

wait for the elements to wear us

down until it’s free to fly.

….Mark Nepo

find the immutable

It would be a supreme accomplishment to live in close communion with my careful watchful core. To do what it says. To be careful when it says be careful. To nourish it with woods and silence when it asks to be nourished. To nurture those friendships, relationships it guides me to; to avoid those it asks me to avoid. To tune into guidance that comes to me in senses and colors, guidance that I can’t put into words, but that I can feel……..Roderick MacIver