Tending the Gathas

Hope builds towards winter solstice with an eye on dismantling it. The shortest day means light to follow. This unworthy sentience I am! I pray away sunless days and beg for the ending of night's suffocation. If I were instead golden dust falling from a daffodil, I would be fully redeemed on the bodies of dancing bees. Engaged Buddhism, indeed!

Lex runs into our arms at the airport and for a moment, the embodied convergence of parenting, love and our role as humans brings peace that surpasses all understanding. Sense of a separate self is mankind's scourge upon the Mother. Children become mothers of our society, a role we adults share. In this way, we have to nourish one another; re-root the uprooted; tend everything with wholeness in mind. It is better to take peaceful steps not simply for oneself or one's children, but for the world.

Beck graduates this weekend; another chapter both ends and begins. He moves home and in doing so, presents another chance for us to model or tend a certain reintegration into the world's greater environment. Sometimes we go a very long way to find ourselves. Yet even upon a realization one was never lost, a gatha may help to bridge what we experience in the world. Maybe as parents we can tend the gatha.

Where are we going?

Thich Nhat Hahn: before starting the car, I know where I am going.

For a long, long time, I haven't known where I was going. Yet, all this time, I didn't really need to go anywhere.

But I can say one thing with a peaceful certainty, this vibration of “forever home” came from illumination by headlights of another car.

All of whomever I am is grateful this doesn't happen alone.