yesterday was a “weeds in a vacant lot” kind of day.

one of those days with a general haze of crumminess, where things just don’t seem to flow or work out very easily.

i had the urge to just put on my blinders, run the errands i had to run for my family, and then hide.

i didn’t want to sit with all of that, so i thought about not meditating, but then i saw this quote i had saved from a poem by Mary Oliver. i recalled my aspiration for meditation – to pay attention, to make friends with myself, to open towards all of life…not just the blue iris.

it’s not just the blue iris that calls for our attention, it is also the weeds in the vacant lot, the small stones. it’s the light, easy days, and it’s the dark, challenging days.

our attention is what we have available to offer to our lives. our attention is our presence. when we offer our presence, we are allowing space for gentleness, for openness, for possibility.

this is all we really have, when all else falls away, isn’t it? we cannot control or manipulate our outside circumstances (as hard as we try and strive to), but we can offer our attention. we can offer ourselves. we can offer our open heart.

when i did sit down to practice, grounded, lifted, with my attention on my breath, the thoughts and feelings of the day arrived as expected, but their assumed power was no longer so assuming. not so thick, not so solid, and they didn’t stick around.

we all have moments of feeling stuck, that our experience is quite solid and unchanging, but if we can allow some space and not feed the story, not continuously ruminate on the thoughts and feelings, we may see a bit clearer into the impermanence of these and into the ever changing flow and possibility of life.

~j

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