Happy Birthday To Me!

3/28/21

Full Moon

Worm Moon (Farmer's Almanac)

Eagle Moon, Goose Moon (Algonquin, Cree)

Crow Comes Back Moon (Northern Ojibwe)

The Sugar Moon (Ojibwe)

The Wind Strong Moon (Pueblo)

The Sore Eyes Moon (Dakota, Lakota, Assiniboine)

I came into this world on Thursday 3/28/74 at 7:35 pm in Chapel Hill, N.C. I am grateful to have lived this long. My heart is utterly broken open like the shell that encases the seed in spring. I am moved to tears readily these days. By the presence of ones I love, by kind gestures, kind words, by feeling the intensity of the experience of other, by profound stillness. The tears that flow aren’t sad tears, they are a cleansing wellspring liberated by the disintegration of the seed’s encasing, flowing in a babbling serpentine course through my tributaries and estuaries, right into the place where my ocean meets the great ocean. The course follows my root as it sends itself down into the humus (hyoomus) of my being—the finest layer of organic material which cannot be composted further—the place from whence all arises.

I am grateful for the depth of the pain I have traversed, pain that brought me to my knees, rendered me in fetal position not knowing if I would make it. This pain, a great teacher, has showed me the breadth of my strength, my courage, my vulnerability, and tenderness. It taught me (if I had any doubt) that in fact, my presence is the metabolizer. It is the alchemizer of the searing, the sting, and the sharpness of the pain into the rich humus, the compost of my being, that in which beauty, joy, life-force, creativity, inspiration, dynamism, peace, compassion, unconditional love, and connection take root. There simply is no other way. The embryo inside the seed becomes both the plant and the root. The stronger the root the steadier when the strong winds blow. The wellspring of my awareness, my attention, nourishes and makes the roots strong. The roots provide ballast in the face of forces that might otherwise feel engulfing, annihilating.

I am here. I have never been here as much as I am now. A journey that began with a turning inward, a turning toward, so many years ago, so many lifetimes ago, has revealed reaches farther than I could have imagined.

I am grateful for silence. I am grateful for the reflection of my love in the eyes of those I love. These are ways I steady and anchor myself. Ways I know myself more deeply.

I am grateful for dancing dappled light on the sandy ocean floor, and ancient audible whale song heard when you sink to the bottom. I am grateful for the peace and calm and silence of snowfall. I am grateful to feel the fullness of my bare footstep on the ground beneath me, the temperature of the air on my skin. I am grateful to smell the sweetness of flowers and the intoxicating musky scent of the earth, to hear birdsong, and feel the warmth of sun on my skin. I am grateful for soft things like feathers and beautiful sounds like the myriad ways water expresses itself: rain, waves lapping the shore, the silent ripple of tears in the tidepool of being, music, and song.

I am grateful for witnessing all of the parts of me: the mean ones, the kind ones, the harsh ones, the bend-over-backwards-to-accommodate ones. The confused ones, the clear ones, the afraid and uncertain ones, the loving ones, the hating ones. I am grateful to realize how welcome they all are. The energies—they’re just that. I get to choose which ones I nourish, which ones I feed. That which we pay attention to grows. It has always been and will always be that way.

I am grateful for my beloved Dan, for family and soul family and friends near and far. I am grateful for myself and the wild ride of this human life. For existence. For the chance to experience love, the majesty of this earth, and human connection. I am grateful my container has grown large enough to hold joy, devastation, and everything in between. So it is to be human.

In the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche a tale is recounted about a blind turtle who lives in all the world’s oceans and surfaces once every hundred years. On the surface of all of the world’s oceans floats one innertube. It is said that the chance of achieving a human life is the same chance as if this blind turtle, surfacing once every hundred years, arose and put its head directly into that one lone innertube floating on all of the world’s oceans. This life is a precious one to be sure. Whether I live another twenty-four hours or forty years, I am so deeply grateful. I have loved and lost, experienced the seasons of this life deeply. Thank you.