May he rest in peace

We buried Jack's ashes in the marigold garden and used the glass flower from Eureka Springs as his marker. I burned a tea-light candle  on the flower and the space was sacred to me because of memory -- Jack.  We share this, this living and dying. The term "share" is becoming the word of the decade where everything you experience has the option to "share" with others. We are all in the universal mix of something bigger then ourselves and it is here that we live and move and have our being. We may try for solitude but cannot hide from community. We are rarely just me. It took loosing Jack to show me the connection of all more closely.

My Mother's Day present was a real surprise -- a huge stone Buddha -- now sitting by the tiny pergola pond. It is quite fabulous -- adding the remembrance of peace to our lives. Jack and Buddha share our backyard place -- both communicating with a part of us beyond the 5 senses. This place beyond wafts in the light of Jack's candle. This place immediate is the image of meditation that sits in our hearts -- a depth of understanding we cannot put into words, cannot say --

What is possible

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness (George Santayana). And I think, "Oh here I am! Here I am again!" I can hold no more. As Jane Hirschfield's, This Was Once a Love Poem, shines up from an email newsletter I am reminded of an extraordinary poet who always catches my heart. Recently, I stumbled onto the work of Danny Gregory's illustrated journals which I immediately ordered in print so I could touch the lovely detailed  drawings. Here as I write are handouts and books from the class on Buddhism I am immersed in. A brochure from ARTS peeks out from under my Google tablet (a device which, btw, delivers too much of the good ---one book order at a time).  I'm exploring a new project which will become a companion piece to The Tao of WordLayers which I've been sharing with others the past several days. I feel that I cannot stop and want to do more play with colors and things of color but there is also laundry to do. I'll turn, for just two seconds, to the geraniums blooming in the south window as the sky prepares to open and rain down on the soot covered piles of February's snows. I am fully grateful for these moments.

Bodhichitta

It is said that in difficult times it is only bodhichitta that heals. When inspiration has become hidden, when we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing can be found in the tenderness of pain itself. Based on a deep fear of being hurt, we erect protective walls made out of strategies, opinions, prejudices, and emotions. Yet just as a jewel that has been buried in the earth for a million years is not discolored or harmed, in the same way this noble heart is not affected by all of the ways we try to protect ourselves from it. From Pema Chodron “The Healing Power of Bodhichitta,” Comfortable with Uncertainty, pages 3-4