The Vagina Monologues

At the Vagina Monologues the other night, first tears. The story - a seventy-two year old woman is interviewed about her vagina. She has never, in all her years, had an organsm. She finds her way to therapy, and with the compassionate encouragement of her therapist, goes home one night, lights candles around her bathtub, turns off the lights, undresses herself. Entering the water, she sits. And then....she enters a world she did not know was there before. Her body.

When she finds her clitoris, finally, she cries. Cries and cries and cries. Pleasure.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change
The courage to change the things that I can
The wisdom to know the difference

Can't find the words, feeling so saturated in the sensation of being. I just let India Arie guide my boat. Over and over and over, she sings, I want to love with an open heart.

On my fifth bladder infection, now down with a sore throat. Physical pain is a doorway, too. All the great texts say: pain and pleasure, the same attachment.

So I contemplate the middle door. Open this one and, ah, relief. Acceptance of what is. That's not denial. Great action is happening, it's all about the source from which it comes. Swimming into the presence of this moment, just this one, I am at peace.

Clear presence, possibly the highest expression of love. Self and other, no distinction. And the pain recedes - whatever that story is, a resolution is writing itself.

For all the sexual violence, may we take back our bodies one day at a time. Without waiting for someone else to give the gift, may we find ourselves with incredible generosity.