Prayers
Adrienne Mehri Shamszad
Last night Adrienne’s voice, her songs and the music she and her band played blasted my heart wide open and made tears stream down my face. She sang poems by Rumi, Hafiz and other amazing mystic Iranian poets in Farsi and it made me understand the longing to be overcome by the love of god.…
Read MoreAnxiety
Behind the curtain of the personality I most often present to the world, I have a fair amount of anxiety streaming through me a lot of the time. The core of my anxiety stems from the experience of being in a group of people or at a party and feeling that no one sees me…
Read MoreLetting GO
My prayer today is to let the letting go happen in an easier, more peaceful way. Whatever is letting go of me is becoming something else that is useful somewhere else. The birds and the trees and the fire and the breeze showed me infinitely that the truth is right here all the time. It’s…
Read MoreDisrupting the flow
Here are some things I’ve been thinking about lately. Current goals for my ongoing, ever-changing state of awareness: 1. Noticing and taking in all visible and invisible forms of disparity I encounter and holding them as an expanded awareness of how to be most human and humane. There is always a worse circumstance or a…
Read MoreMya Hall
#sayhername #MyaHall Mya Hall died on March 30, 2015 after an incident involving her crashing an SUV into a police cruiser near the gates of the Baltimore NSA. She was a 27 year old black, trans woman. Simply living life as a black, trans woman puts her in an incredibly vulnerable state considering the cards…
Read MoreI love you
I wrote this 4 years ago and I remember precisely the feeling of expressing it. I still feel exactly the same way. The growing edge is living it and choosing this level of dedication to move, act and react from this wise and inspired part of myself. The sincerity of my words hold up over…
Read MoreMeditation
I captured only a fraction of the intricate drops of rain beaded on the flower buds and leaves in this garden. The rain felt dewy and mist-like. I can’t remember ever feeling so content to be covered in tiny droplets of water and larger, more splatter-y drops falling on my head from the branches of…
Read MoreMy Aunt Joan
In the beginning of January, I posted about my Aunt Joan, my dad’s middle sister, and her declining mental & physical health. Since then, several people in her town called the police to do wellness checks on her and they finally declared her unfit to live on her own or return to her house. After…
Read MoreNoan
My Aunt Joan seems to be losing touch with reality. She has disconnected herself from her friends and community and is barely picking up the phone when family members call. She doesn’t have internet, email, or a cell phone. She lives alone and isn’t letting anyone into her house and won’t agree to let us…
Read MoreTruth
I often think as I sit down to write, “What is the most true thing that I could say today?” Of course, I don’t always share the most true things for good reasons. Not everything needs to be shared. Some things are private and sacred. Most of us share so little of our interior experience.…
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