A Walk in the Rain

Rather than practicing Qi Gong, meditation, and writing a blog post this morning, I took my dogs on a long walk in the foothills. It started to rain. I didn’t have an umbrella or raincoat. It was a light rain and refreshing as I was so hot. It was quiet. We saw hardly anyone. The mountains in the distance were misty and covered in fog. All day I was itching to get here, to reach out to whomever and make a connection, to say, I am here. Where are you? I hope you are okay.

That’s what I’m doing here, why I’m doing this—to share with you that I am okay, fine, and brilliant, and sometimes wretched. I hope you are fine and brilliant as well, and if you are sometimes also wretched, my heart goes out to you. I wish we could be together. And we are, here, in this virtual space.

Peace be with you, my friend.

The way to turn this arrow into a flower is to open our hearts and look at how we try to escape. We can use our pleasure-seeking as an opportunity to observe what we do in the face of pain.

--Pema Chödrön. Comfortable With Uncertainty,  p.41