Yesterday I participated in a Sensory Awareness workshop titled Studying Our Nature through Sensing: The Living Treasure of Being.

As we worked, beautifully led by Miren Salmeron, I felt the tightness in my jaw and throat.  When I reached out toward an imagined flower, there was release.  Release.  I could breathe and I exulted in the exhale, the exhalation that is a reaching out. 

What do I breathe into the world?

When I touch my face, does my hand touch my face, or does my face reach toward my hand, or both, and is there a “my”, an “I”? 

How deeply and spaciously do I meet “the living treasure of being”?

After dropping into an exploration of experimentation with ourselves, Michael Atkinson led a discussion of our discoveries.  He mentioned the book Silas Marner by George Eliot.  I re-read it last night.  It’s definitely a book for the mature and not eighth graders.  There’s a great deal there to digest.

This morning I read that John Muir was a racist.  I was shocked to read that the Sierra Club may take down their monument to him.  Will the name of Muir Woods now be changed?  Should it be?  I don’t know.  I’m mind-boggled these days.  

When my cousin was young, his family moved from Indiana to Georgia.  He came home from school and asked his parents how the South lost the Civil War when they won all the battles.

We’re influenced by what we’re taught and how we’re raised.  Now we’re in a time of incredible change.  I feel like we’re caught in a fireworks display. We have Black Lives Matter and the pandemic at a time when leadership is corrupt and everything is erupting around us with a bang, bank, bang.

Perhaps when the light of the fireworks goes out, we’ll be led by the light from the stars.

This morning I went outside and watered in a soft rain as I considered how to balance the intricacies of social distancing and the need for relationship, companionship, and touch. 

Words of E.M. Forster come to mind. “Only connect!”

Today, my intention is to connect heart and gut as I honor the living treasure of being.