Reorienting in the chaos

It’s chaos, huh? It’s like some drunken maniac has come in and flipped the table, sending stuff flying everywhere, including dangerous shards of glass and boiling water. Hard to know where to look first, how to help, whom to protect, what to even say.

Here in the Bay Area there’s chaos of a different kind: riots—riots, I tell you!—of plum blossoms and magnolia blossoms and quince blossoms, of orange poppies and neon yellow flowers growing in the sidewalks, of freaking cooper's hawks and scrub jays screeching away and fighting with the crows and yes, echoes of protest marches in the park two streets over, and man. It’s beautiful.

My inbox is lousy with poetry since evidently I set it up that way, gradually over time so I never suspected that I’d literally wake up one day and have a nearly overwhelming number of beautiful things to read over coffee. No time for the Times; into the trash that usually goes, unread. Meanwhile I’m getting to know James Crews and Maya Stein and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Brianna Wiest and Audre Lorde and Ross Gay and Andrea Gibson and I’m falling in love, in love …

And my heart is breaking and I’m giving up and then I’m back and I’m cooking gnocchi with burst tomatoes and watching The White Lotus and I’m writing posts and getting sixes (too many sixes) in Wordle, and friends’ parents are dying and I’m walking past the coffee shop that just opened on the corner with the teal walls and is already full to brimming and I wonder about abundance and I invite miracles and they come.

It’s chaos.

Amid all of this has bloomed a few different offerings, all of which are attempts not to control the chaos, but to orient ourselves to it in new ways: by finding deeper resources, becoming more anchored in what we know—even now—to be true. Continuing to wonder and to experience wonder.

Two of these events are even in person! One is me (and maybe you) getting to work with two wisdom teachers I admire deeply, whose journeys through life and grief have been deeply embodied and transformative, and who radiate love. You’ll see.

There are some opportunities to step (literally in one case) into this exploration with us in a group. There’s also coaching, which offers you a quiet, supportive space to come home to yourself.

I hope to connect with you soon.

Look up. Beauty’s everywhere. Still. Always.