1. Truth: I am obsessed with peonies right now. Just like I do every year around this time, I attempt to drown myself in them. I can’t get enough.
2. Truth: This post usually happens on Tuesday and is only three truths. But this has been a busy week, the last week on my contract, finals week at CSU, and I’m sick so that makes everything harder, and I wasn’t going to write this post at all this week, especially not today when I’m home sick and just want to sleep, but then I remembered…
3. Truth: Five years ago today, Kelly passed away. This day doesn’t pass just like any other. I’m not sure if it ever will. This whole season, the shift from winter to spring, all the blooms and the rain, the flowers and the flooding, reminds me of her, and then that reminds me of Obi, and that reminds me of Dexter. I’m acutely aware of everything I’ve lost, and everything I have because I was so hurt, all the ways I opened up and let life in because I had no other choice — tender and terrible, beautiful and brutal.
4. Truth: I’m sick because I worked too hard, didn’t take care of myself. More than anything I need to learn how to be of service, to give, to be generous and helpful and compassionate without running myself into the ground. I need to figure out how to care for myself as well as I do others, to make sure that it happens so I can keep going.
5. Truth: My life would feel like enough if I truly let myself experience each moment, each breath. For example, I could stay with the joy, the creative energy of learning and putting together yoga classes for yoga teacher training, just that and not project myself into teaching this weekend, worrying about maybe getting sicker, all the things I need to get done in the next few days, etc. — I could be calm, peaceful, at ease, well, content right now. All I need to do is be in this moment, rather than carrying the weight of all the possible moments.
6. Truth: I don’t practice to feel some things and not others, I practice to feel all the things. I want to meet whatever is arising in this moment, be open to all of it, be vulnerable. I put so much energy into resisting, forgetting, running away when it’s so much easier to relax with what is, to be here now. I listened to a Daily Dharma Gathering talk with Koshin Paley recently and he said, “The more I become intimate with old age, sickness, and death… the surprise is I feel more alive and joyful.”
7. Truth: I want the last thing Eric and I say to each other to be “love you.” I insist on it every time we part, so that our last words don’t end up being something like “are you coming home for the dogs?” or “don’t forget your lunch.” It might not work out, but I’m still going to try.
8. Truth: I’m so tired right now I’m about to fall over. So, I think I’ll go finally take a shower and then take another nap.
One wish: Even though the first noble truth is that life is suffering, may we find ways to ease suffering, for ourselves and each other and the world.
1. Watching this peony open right in front of me. I was sitting at my desk and heard a rustle. I looked over at her, and in slow motion her petals started to uncurl, falling open until I could see all the way into the yellow of her center. It was so amazing, so precious, it’s still hard to believe it actually happened.
4. Eric. How he takes care of me and the dogs, goes hiking and running with the dogs, makes me laugh, loves to read, has weird nerdy interests and habits that drive me crazy but are also adorable, how excited he gets to learn a new fact or hear something funny and share it.
Bonus joy: Good Earth Sweet & Spicy Tea, Netflix and Hulu, a hot shower, clean towels, sunshine, bees, bird song, mac & cheese with roasted veggies, naps, a good warm hat, space heaters, radio, and what she looked like when she opened.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 