wonder

March!? Hot damn, it's been since March?! Well I can see why. Quite a bit has happened since then. Selah and I moved in with my parents in Hopkinton, a friend passed away, I went to Argentina for a fairy tale wedding (someone else's, not mine), experienced an existential crisis or spiritual emergency as Roberto Assagioli would have called it, transcended said spiritual emergency to enter a state of untouchable contentment, triumphed at work to implement new flexible, balanced, work-life time for the whole office, and re-launched my website and intention for my health counseling business.

And I haven't been writing here because I've still been afraid to show myself to the internet and to the humans on the other side of the internet. Which some would say is not such a bad thing, but is it serving me? I'm writing now, at this moment, with the encouragement of a sweet friend, Jeannie. She said, "hey? you writing?" I said, "no! yes!" It's like I've been performing burlesque while wearing a nude body stocking. You think you're seeing something; I know you're not. Time to get down to the pasties.

For the record, I did write a couple of somethings for Recovering Yogi and was interviewed by the author of Deepening Wisdom. It's not the Sahara over here. Things are happening, I'm just not waving you over to take a look.

Okay so I will pick up this ReVerb prompt thing but really I'm likely going to frame most of my responses within the past year, especially the past three months. I think it's really important to communicate just what has transpired here so that I can support others in doing the same. And I am still terrified to tell you my business. But is it serving me? Not really.

Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

I have been cultivating a sense of wonder by getting close to death. This is the truth. Death has been tapping me on the shoulder regularly, and so I've finally turned around and given it a hug. This is not morbid at all. It's actually had the beautiful consequence of allowing me to be deeply engaged on a regular basis, of seeing clearly and deeply, and showing up for others in my life. I have begun hospice volunteering (oddly enough had begun my training for it before my friend Kris passed away in May) and this has also had the effect of jolting me into the present. Some have asked me whether I chose to do hospice volunteering as "practice" because my mother is ill. The answer to that is no. I can't explain precisely why I chose it, something in my heart just told me it was the right thing to do, an important thing to do. It's important to be with people while they're dying. And while you're with them, you can just drop your own story and get down with the fact that death is universal. We are all going to die. All of us. The more we try to avoid it the more painful life is. So with the understanding that we're all going to die, why not show up to life? This is wonder. Full.