These days are like scooping mercury. Chasing after it can be so exhausting as it beads and evades more with each attempt to contain it.
Feeling the need to clean it up, but might just have to sit here for a bit and just watch as it glides and rolls around making beautiful patterns and shapes.
Remarkable how something so potentially harmful can have such valuable purpose and be so beautiful.
Both chairs are always available to you. One sits above and allows you to sprinkle your wisdom confidently, but also requires you to hold a caring space, to lift me up. The other sits at the feet of the first, providing a place to listen, learn and receive, ignighted by curiosity and wonder.
Which seat do you choose? Can you find a way to sit under, to humbly receive and accept knowledge and perspective from others? Can you sit above without looking down and casting a shadow?
Is there a way you can fit in either seat depending not on what you desire but on what I need?
Every day, I tenderly pluck and sort the unwanted guests between the treasured plants in the garden of this life of mine. I carefully reach between the stalks and flowers I choose to keep and arrange them all just so.
And, even with the most careful attention, I never leave my garden without scrapes, brush marks and bruises.
Yes, some of the most treasured plants in my garden have thorns. I move with particular sensitivity around them lest they snag my flesh. And somehow even as they cut me, I am still able to see their beauty and feel their special worth. They reach out and brush against me as if they just want to touch, to say “isn’t this all so grand that we are here?!”
It is at that moment when I am wounded but still capable of loving – even those plants with thorns – that I recognize that this coexistence is the essence of thriving.
Every chance I get I practice. I practice kindness. I practice patience. I practice forgiveness. I practice equity. I practice with myself and I practice with others.
In a space of curiosity and playfulness, I simply practice. Practice creates a constant wave of evolution from where I was to where I am and leaves room for me to progress. It comes without any judgment about whether I have done enough or done it right.
Life is intended to be a practice, not a perfect….to make progress, not flawless ness…and to give you and me a chance to grow together.
