gratitude
-
Among the Well and Loving Ancestors 🌿☀️🕯️
Today is August 26, 2026—my 49th birthday. 🎂 It is also my grandmother Daisy’s remembrance day. She passed away 44 years ago today, on August 26, 1982, my 5th birthday. And it has been 569 days since my mother, Gloria,… Continue reading
-
We Are Not Asked to Copy the Past 🌿
There comes a moment in every seeker’s life when a quiet question begins to rise… Can I honor where I come from without becoming a replica of it? Whether we’re exploring our ancestry, our faith, our culture, or the traditions… Continue reading
-
🪽 When the Dragonfly Crossed My Threshold
The Sacred Ordinary 🌧️✨ Last night, while thunder rolled across the Midwestern sky and rain danced against the windows, something extraordinary happened. A tiny dragonfly flew into our home. 🪽 Not a large dragonfly gliding effortlessly over a pond, but… Continue reading
-
🌾 The Field Beyond Right and Wrong
Meeting One Another in the Ground of Being “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Those words, spoken by the Sufi mystic Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī, have echoed through centuries because they point… Continue reading
-
She returns in whispers.
Spring does not arrive with trumpets. Before the roses stretch, before the fruit trees dare their blossoms, the small ones rise first — the quiet keepers of the threshold. They come not in spectacle but in persistence, lifting their green… Continue reading
-
🌿 The Tree in the Midst: Awakening Consciousness in the Garden
Sometimes the deeper meaning of a story doesn’t appear until we slow down and look at the language itself. Recently I found myself doing exactly that with the Genesis garden narrative—sitting with the Hebrew words, tracing their roots, and letting… Continue reading
-
The Quiet Courage of Incarnation 🕊️
The phrase has been echoing everywhere lately —For such a time as this. It has been used as a rallying cry.A prophetic banner.A declaration of destiny in the midst of upheaval. But when it resurfaced for me, it did not… Continue reading
-
When the Cactus Bloomed 🌺🤍🌒
A meditation on patience, perception, and quiet trust This morning nothing changed — and yet everything did. ✨ The cats wrestled in their usual tumble of fur and tail.The sitar and tabla hummed softly through the room.The rocking chair creaked… Continue reading
-
Abandoning the Theology of Suffering
There was a time when I believed that suffering made me sacred.That enduring pain was proof of my devotion.That if I could just love enough, stay long enough, endure quietly enough — something holy would be born from it. But… Continue reading
-
When the Seed Does Not Bloom in Plain Sight 🌱✨
Lately I have been sitting with a quiet realization — one that feels both ancient and immediate. It began as a contemplation of the parable of the seeds:some falling on rocky ground,some on dry soil,some on fertile earth. But instead… Continue reading
thedevotedmystic.com 