Dust from the Sahara desert fertilizes the Amazon basin. Trade winds carry tons of particles containing phosphorous across the ocean, depositing the exact nutrients needed for thick jungle growth.

Can we untether this love and trust it to the same wind?

Icicles gleam and shimmer as they shimmy their way down empty branches, gliding, melting, collecting into patterns on the snow. Their form has no form, yet they become the form of what they cling to. Until the sunlight comes, and again they melt into the earth.Tiny, glistening, drops of you and I.

Nashville, 2015

I’m having a hard time separating where we begin and where we end. At what point did our atoms immesh? Is entanglement reversible or infinite? What use are lines written in the sand when there is an ocean of emotion raging against the shore?

Can we forget this, and search for seashells to toss amongst the waves? Can we retrace our faded footsteps to find the moment we confused self with other?

We are all One. Jealousy has no place here. We are the raindrops, immune to competition. We can not be divided. The individual is indivisible, infinitesimal, ephemeral. We are explosions of star dust, ink blots on a wall, connected by the force of Life propelling us onward into expansion.

We are not machines, functioning independently of each other. We are organisms. What harms me, harms you. I cannot proclaim love and grace to others if it is not aimed at my own composition of skin cells and synapses. When I devalue and doubt, I am failing to appreciate the vision and perspective I bring to the greater Whole. I am forgetting to look within and without for the stability and direction I need. I am choosing to believe in separation and isolation. I am comparing something that is not me, to something I think is me. This is a hoax.

Nashville, 2015

My Love practice has to begin here. Within my chest, inside these bones. I have to find the inner strength to love when I am not at my best–overindulgent, scared, avoidant, snappy, judgmental, critical, static, blocked. I have to trust that I am loved even when I am emotional, fearful, apathetic, alone and disengaged. I have to remember my connection to the earth when I feel flighty and confused.

I have to believe in my own worthiness before I can begin to see others as worthy and inherently valuable.

Nashville, 2015

And so I will choose to love. I will choose to love the dark places inside this cavernous chest of mine. I will light a candle for every fear that I carry within me, I will say a prayer for every doubt and jealous observation. I will whisper softly to my dreams and make room for them to grow in harmony with yours. I will sing to the scared child and soothe the tantrums of disappointment and pain. I will forgive the self-inflicted wounds with tenderness, and honor the lessons learned. I will caress the scars and uneven places. I will bear them with pride and humility for the ones who caused the original injury.

I will illuminate the shame I hold inside so that healing can begin. I will expose the storehouses of joy and light–the harvest is great and there is much to share.

Nashville, 2015

I will find balance and rootedness. I will become the mountain and the tree. I will watch the icicles in my heart melt with patience, waiting for the soft breeze of Spring to bring news of hope and survival. I will place my faith in the natural course of transition, the ever-changing flow of seasons of life and death.

I will follow the trade winds. I will become barren just to fertilize your growth. I will cross ocean depths to add my life to yours. I will do all of this for you and for me. I will become a raindrop, falling beside you, and as I follow you into the ocean, I’ll gently remind you that we are the same.

You are my love practice.