Warning: This reflection includes a bit of description of three Csections... We have been blessed by three children. I had three C sections; three different cuts and scars. When the second child was being extracted, there was a moment of panic when I was told that what was taking so long (Csections are usually very brief procedures) was the surgeon was having difficulty cutting through scar tissue from the first child. All worked out in the end and I was warned that the incision was not as clean as it might have been?! I will stop there and leave the third laborious and jagged birthing surgery to your imagination except to say a different anesthesia was used and yet a third incision was made?!   I spent years wondering about this uniqueness I literally wore on my body. The words “we have never seen anyone develop such strong scar tissue” were at first a badge of shame and have become more of a curiosity. I search periodically for consolations and meaning as the desolation an...

  (Based on Nihonga painting style wherein layers of self made pigment from metallic substances are carefully and methodically applied) Layers of Pigment   “live in the layers/ not in the litter” Stanley Kunitz Intrigued by the layers of precious pigment applied in the Japanese nihonga style and aesthetic, I gazed until the eyes of my soul rested on an unlikely rainbow in malachite shards. This rainbow shimmered and dimmed In refracted rhythm with the sun’s certain movement. Beauty. Once realized, however, I was consoled by an eternal rotation Of invisible and visible phases like the moon, like grace.

  “At the edges, Look to the edges. There’s always hope at the edges.” Rowan Williams I have a fear of ledges. But edges are another thing. I am drawn to them, intrigued by them, and learn from them. Perhaps that is why I am finding such inspiration in some recent reading which, albeit in very different contexts, offers the value of “edges”.  Edges are thresholds to novel and liminal space; ledges often really limit that transition or travel. We might spend time at the edge instead of retreating toward the common middle. I have thought a lot of what takes place at the edges. I think about all that transpires at the borders, new life at best, and too often torture and turmoil. New birth at the edge of the birth canal, also presenting danger, but certainly the threshold to this crazy beautiful world!  Shorelines, river banks, are edges which support and guide the mysterious wonders of water. Where earth and sky meet, in the humus, roots take shelter in the edges of dirt and...

  Padraig O’Tuama: We might have some capacity to learn how to respond with more equanimity to these forces we cannot control.  Sharon Salzberg: Certainly if I heard the word “equanimity,” long ago, I’d have thought, that’s really bizarre. What does that mean? And so many times, we think it means indifference, but it really doesn’t. It’s such a huge capacity of our hearts to see what we’re going through, to see what others are going through, and to just have this perspective of, there is change in life, and there is light in the darkness and darkness in the light. And we’re not avoiding pain, because some things just hurt. That’s fundamental. But we’re holding it in a way that it’s like the love is stronger than the pain, even. And then we can really be with things in a very, very different way. Equanimity is a word which has crept up a lot in my life lately and it is usually just on the other side of integration, or should I say productive integration?! Sometimes it is hard t...