I wake this summer Monday morning aware of unfolding. The fog is in and I see a tinge of pink. It will lift early today, dissipate, or perhaps it is that it unfolds as I intend to allow today.

I scan through this living that appears to be mine though it expands out to involve watering plants and petting, feeding, and kissing kitties and Steve. Words and purrs are shared. Coffee grown far away moves through me, an awakening lake. My small and intimate sensory awareness group meets this morning on Zoom and I look at notes from the past to prepare. I open doors. What is mine to share?

I come to words by Dawn Prince-Hughes, a woman with Aspergers. In her struggle to understand human communication, she began to sit outside the window of the enclosure for the silverback gorillas at the Seattle zoo.  One day she arrived upset. Congo, a silverback male gorilla noticed and rushed to the window. He motioned her to put her head on his shoulder. They touched through the glass.   They felt the glass as fluid.

She says: 

I probably stayed with him like that, with my head on his shoulder, for 30 minutes or so. I think it was probably the first time I was genuinely comforted by another person. Congo really set the standard for what social interactions should be like between me and another living being. You just can’t worry about looking like a fool. You can’t worry about getting hurt. You can’t worry about whether you’re right or not. It just boils down to wanting to be connected at all costs, at all risks. I no longer wanted to allow the permeability of my spirit to seek smaller and smaller shelters. It requires a completely open heart. I felt like I found a way to go home through the glass. — Dawn Prince-Hughes

I sit with that this morning, feeling my heart open through all barriers, a flower in full bloom, nestled with other hearts, connected at the root.