Bodhi leaves half eaten apples, and the occasional pear, all over the house. I find them beneath couch cushions, on side tables, in sock drawers, abandoned and discarded, rotting. Bodhi is all about that first bite, the conquest. A dozen clean and shiny apples arrive in the fruit basket every week, each one new and unexplored. He waits, knowing if I see him I will take the apple, cut it in half, remove the seeds and offer it to him. In these instances, he eats the entire apple, leaving nothing behind but he doesn’t ask me to cut the apples. He prefers to grapple with what is too large, too much and more than he can ingest. Bodhi approaches life like half eaten apples, nothing needs to be finished, it is about the next great thing, the next forbidden something to monopolize his interest.
When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment. It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float. It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within. It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains. Eyes closed. Eyes opened. A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being. It takes courage.
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