GRACE

I needed to revisit this tender, grounding passage by Susan Stinson today. May it speak to you, too -  

". . . May your hands weather with grace. May your fingers smell good. May chill on your arms keep you alive to your skin as much as warmth might do. May you grieve when you need to and know your own lacks, with matter-of-fact awareness, like you know the landscape of leaving where you sleep to begin the day. Leave the sleep. Begin the day. Offer things. Work. Build. Step toward others. Take a lean and a fall as a chance to spin on the floor on your back. Gather your courage. Make beautiful meals. Know your gifts and delight in them with specific, attentive vigor. Shovel. Pedal. Cruise. Oh, my darlings and others, listen as if you mean it, as if it matters, as if that act, in itself, were consuming and a kind of completion. When the moment opens, answer. The toilet might be running again in the other room. Get up, shake the handle and keep going. If the water goes quiet, there will still be ticking. We are our ordinary lives, and they have such depths and textures. We brush against the nap in relationship, or we're pressed to the plush, or something is jabbing, the plastic stem of an old tag, a broken zipper, but we dress in the fabrics of the lives near ours, however we bring them near. Such clothes. Such colors. . . "

Thank you, Susan. (Visit Susan's website here and her blog here.)

_/\_

When the moment opens, answer

This coming Monday night, Tomas - my youngest - will be boarding a plane to the UK. His anticipation is palpable. For him, this flight is a movement towards, rather than away. A double Sagittarian, he was born to travel, ponder, seek, research, teach, touch, learn. . . He's living his passion, preparing to enroll for post-grad. study in Philosophy and Finance (esp. the Philosophy of Finance) at Cambridge University. Seeing him onto the plane will be one of those 'thrill/pang' moments with which we are all so familiar. . .  a fierce embrace/deep release moment in which the heart will be called to open wider. Further. More. 

It's the middle of the night here. I'd ordinarily be sleeping at this hour, but a storm woke me (rain first tickling then thrumming on my studio's corrugated iron roof), so I've been rustling through old iPhoto albums and emails in search of I'm not sure what, but very likely because I needed to come upon this again - 

". . . May your hands weather with grace. May your fingers smell good. May chill on your arms keep you alive to your skin as much as warmth might do. May you grieve when you need to and know your own lacks, with matter-of-fact awareness, like you know the landscape of leaving where you sleep to begin the day. Leave the sleep. Begin the day. Offer things. Work. Build. Step toward others. Take a lean and a fall as a chance to spin on the floor on your back. Gather your courage. Make beautiful meals. Know your gifts and delight in them with specific, attentive vigor. Shovel. Pedal. Cruise. Oh, my darlings and others, listen as if you mean it, as if it matters, as if that act, in itself, were consuming and a kind of completion. When the moment opens, answer. The toilet might be running again in the other room. Get up, shake the handle and keep going. If the water goes quiet, there will still be ticking. We are our ordinary lives, and they have such depths and textures. We brush against the nap in relationship, or we're pressed to the plush, or something is jabbing, the plastic stem of an old tag, a broken zipper, but we dress in the fabrics of the lives near ours, however we bring them near. Such clothes. Such colors. . . "

Susan Stinson (visit Susan's website here and her blog here.)

(     (    (   (   (   (  (  ( ( ( ( O )  )  )  )  ) ) ) ) ) ) )) O ((((( O ))))) O (( ( ( ( ( ( ( (  (  (  ( O ) ) ) )  )   )   )   )    )    )