sunday books and roses

Here is my latest library stack of inviting bound packages. I can't wait to read each of them, although the likelihood of me actually doing so in a timely fashion is next to none. Perhaps they will have some sort of osmotic impartation from their perch on my bedside table.

And here is my lovely Valentine bouquet gifted to me by my beloved Baba on a day when I sorely needed a little externalized validation of love. They sit on my alter beside photos of Ramana Maharshi, Joel Goldsmith and Bertie...beside statues of Buddha bedecked with my grandmother's rosaries and clear quartz malas. They remind me of a conversation I had with Owen over a year ago, in which he told me that it was time for me to be a rose.
I contemplate them with their graceful thorny stalks and elegant blooms. The tender coloration of each blushing petal opening with delight. I look at them and imagine myself among their beauty and feel what it would be like to blossom with that kind of unabashed abandon complete WITH thorns...with an ingrained ability to protect...to demand respect...to embody it.
Ah yes...roses.

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FORGET ABOUT ‘HEALING’

Some days, you just have to forget about ‘healing’. You have to stop trying to feel better, trying to overcome your emotional wounds, or trying to be anywhere other than where you are. You have to embrace the day as it is. And you have to give yourself the most sacred permission of all: To shatter. To break. To be an ugly mess. To lean into a place of utter humility and powerlessness in yourself. To cry out to the heavens, “I can’t do this!” To admit utter defeat in the loss of the life you had imagined. To crumble to the ground, lonely and hopeless and profoundly ruined. To want to die, even. And there, in the darkest places, in the blackness of the underworld, you may begin to rediscover... life. And learn to love the beginnings. A sacred reboot: A single breath. The way the sun warms your face. The sound of a tiny bird singing in the tree over there. The raw simplicity of a single moment of human existence. Hell has been transmuted, thr...

a story recently shared by a friend

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He is no longer here

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angelbirdflies

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