Web of Writers

I used to love to read the diaries of Aniis Nin. Her life so juicy and unearthed. And I loved to read letters between women writers. Or about tales of friendships between the women behind famous men, how their deep connections were an art form in themselves.

We've all but lost the art of letters, though the blog may be a rising from those ashes, where the practice of reflection is shared across distances. I love to be a part of it. Like a streaming poem between satellites.

The other morning the phone rang and to my great surprise, Tanya, from Go Mama was on the other line. It took me a moment to orient since I had never heard her voice before, to bring together the spirit of someone with whom I feel very connected from the blogosphere and her every day presence. She called just to check-in and see how I was doing. How wonderful is that?

This morning I found this email from Jerri, in response to my most recent blog post. I asked her permission to reprint it here because it's so thoughtfully written, and such a gift.

To all the amazing women and men (are there any men?) who read this blog, thank you. The intention and depth that you bring to this circle greatly enhances my life. Blessings.

Jerri's letter:

Woke up thinking of you, P.

Your most recent post stayed with me all night long,
both dreaming and waking.

My struggles with my sister mirror yours with wiffing
and mothering, in many ways. And both are like the
idea that Christianity and the Teachings are
different.

We humans see either/or, black or white, even where
all colors exist, overlap, and entwine. Your life is
not either the Teachings or relationship and mothering
any more than mine is the Teachings or relationship
with my sister. Those relationships *are* the
practice, they are the stony path on which we're asked
to walk. Like Christianity and Buddhism, they
peacefully co-exist in our hearts if we allow and
accept the simple truth: Many paths. One God.

Why do we watch tv and eat Oreos when we could be
practicing? Because in the daily flow, we forget who
we are. We forget what truly feeds us and reach
instead for what's easy and close at hand, no matter
how hungry it leaves us.

One of the ideas that most affected me in your post:
"the one in whose glance and grace I found (or
returned to) my place."

Another: "Every sunrise. . . a new beginning. . .a
gesture of remembering again.

You and he express so beautifully the knowledge that
before we had faces, before we took on these bodies
and these stories, we knew our place. Our learning is
not acquiring new information, it is shedding that
which is not Truth. Every sunrise brings opportunities
to remember again.

In these lives, the ones we've chosen this time, our
paths are not lives lived only in meditation caves,
where teachings are clear and understandings are not
challenged or polluted. No, we've chosen paths that
include toddlers and husbands and sisters and others
who demand that we bring forth our understandings and
live them in the light of day, out where the winds
tear apart our calm and disperse it to the corners of
the earth like dandelion fluff on spring mornings.

But if we stop, if we remember our place, we find that
those same winds that blow the Teachings away from us
also return essential truths to us. *This* is the
cycle of destruction and creation, Shiva and Vishnu,
the vibrational syllable that founds one world as it
takes another apart.

Entropy, the 2nd law of thermodynamics: the moment a
thing comes into existence, it begins to be destroyed.

We gain an understanding, recognize the spark in
someone's eye, meet ourselves in a cave and at that
very moment, the understanding begins to slip away.
Our path is learning not to clutch at that which is
always changing. Neither attachment nor aversion.

We have attracted to us the teachers we need for this
learning. That is why they stir us up so vehemently.
Our strong reactions to them are not deviations from
the path, they *are* the path.