​The solidity of earth supporting practice
Breath filling energy/emotional body space
The flow of Metta to all phenomena
Eros lit for meaningful image to arise

​Wisdom, art, and balance are essential
For an erotic Middle Way
To know you and not lose myself
The duet becomes divine

The following poetic reflections were written before and and during this retreat. May they be for the benefit of all. 

​Shaping Love
 
Deep within the black inky womb of desire
you hide in a coiled heap of tangled tentacles,
waiting to be discovered, understood, 
free to swim in a sea of sensitivities
warm enough to display your meaningful symbols.
 
As I settle in samadhi, 
curious about what you are,
what you are capable of,
energy and emotional bodies
become the dark waters 
to make space
for the graceful ways you move-
 
an iconic vision 
of loving and being loved 
that has potential to bleed 
into the beyonds 
of other murky relationships.
 
12/29/24
​

​Sangha
 
There is a breath of benevolence 
that at sweeps through the temple
despite stormy thoughts, gales of feeling,
unstable sensations that threaten 
the very foundation of trust.
Can you settle in samadhi,
sense a tincture of glittering metta
seeding the space with image?
When the season seems bleak and barren,
impregnate it with Eros,
tend to your tender heart.
May the community garden flourish
to echo and mirror the temple within.
 
1/1/24

Veiling and Unveiling
 
How can I hate you
when you are like a bird’s nest,
empty of a single cause or condition 
built with a fullness of intention
for something meaningful 
to grow within you.
 
How can I misunderstand you
when you are of the same substance 
as other great minds and loving hearts,
of spacious awareness itself
not seeking to judge but discover
your fullness of intention.
 
May I learn to love
the shapeshifter with a name
that limits your dimensionality,
see you through a silk screen 
that outlines your divinity 
but fails to define its shape.
 
1/2/24

​Sea Glass

glistening tears
your aquamarine eyes
shaped by grief

1/10/25

Devotion
 
bodies burning, yearning
to touch, to be consumed
to find the missing half
the consort for completion
 
why not be the fire
burning endlessly 
for the divine 
without knowing
 
who or what 
the divine 
really is

​
Shine a Light…”It’s You!”
 
Shine a light through your stained-glass heart.
Even the brokenness, the shards, the stone
cast through your sensitivities is repairable.
Your story is rich, meaningful,
a cathedral in time, a gathering
of all your particularities in service
of healing the hole in the window
to love the world beyond it.

 1/11/25

Seeing Through Saffron Eyes
 
I am in love with all of your particularities,
the ballad you long to hear your partner 
sing when the world misunderstands,
making love to all of your most intimate 
places till you writhe in ecstasy
longing to please me, in total 
devotion to my most worthy cause-
to mirror particularities
of the divine in others,
and heal the separation.

​
Humility
 
I am not the only one
with a song in my heart,
a poem to describe 
how I metabolize this world,
a prayer for ease
and soulful connections.
 
Let me make space 
for you, dear Sangha,
swirling dervishes on the dance floor 
in praise of what you love-
fellow poets, seekers, healers
embodying your own unique stories.
 
Not better, not worse
not even equal to,
and so much more
than you ever imagined,
kneeling humbly at the altar
of all you are called to serve.
 
Waiting, eternally waiting
for a candle to be lit
by the One who knows
your temperamental heart
and still trusts you
to carry the flame.

 1/12/25
​

Drawn to the Rhythm 
 
outlined in souls
the stones carry their names
the heart too vast
for one beach to carry
 
as each stone blows
away from the collective
by ignorance, by isolation,
by death
 
the small heart aches
as the larger one sighs
at the human predicament 
of arrogance and disconnection 
 
the rhythm of the sea
the beat of each heart
how can one not love
the imperfect design


​Walk, Dance Gently
 
It feels like a pebble in the forefoot,
dense, hot, throbbing, unwelcome.
Even the medical term to define it,
metatarsalgia sounds like a weapon,
an arrogant scientific explanation,
a piece of the puzzle given more significance 
than the rest of the temple’s wonder.
What if I renamed you to something 
softer than the impact of heavy
footsteps that gave you your name?
Metta-toe-savoring. Please forgive me
for the ways I have misnamed,
misinterpreted, misunderstood you.
You are the small, intricate bases
that support the columns 
of this sacred temple, the conduit
to fertile ground that cannot 
be trampled upon.
​

Gestation 
 
first full moon 
swollen 
with our loving desires
when will she give birth?

1/13/25

Invoking Image
 
undress my heart
pull me apart
take me under your skin
into worlds you have been 
 
stay close to me
for all of eternity
and if you must leave
enter me to conceive
 
soulful visions
metta missions
flexible convictions
being forgiven 
 
for my ignorance 
 
1/14/25

Winter’s Breath
 
so many branches
raised in prayer
teach me 
how to humbly 
surrender
breathing in
breathing out
in your love


I’ve Been Given to Know
 
I’ve been given to know
A sleek black panther 
With bright yellow eyes
I’ve been given to know
A sleek black panther 
With bright yellow eyes
 
What strikes me about him
Is the way he claws at the flesh
Tearing muscles and tendons
Breaking bone
 
When I am in his presence
I am reduced to a bloody heart
That is somehow still beating
Tenderly held
And no longer mine
 
I’ve been given to know
A sleek black panther 
With bright yellow eyes

 1/16/25

The art class is located inside a studio in a small suburban shopping center next to an Indian grocery store. As Rachel and I walk in, we exchange exuberant facial expressions. Instead of a woman in midlife, I feel like a kindergartener about to fingerpaint. Our eyes widen in excitement as we take in the mosaic tiles and beads neatly separated by colors in small bowls at each workstation. Turkish mosaic lamps and candle holders of various designs are on display throughout the room to inspire our imagination.

“Where should we sit?”, I ask Rachel.

“Let’s sit at the edge of the table so we have more room to move around”, she replies.

“Good idea!”

We place our belongings on two chairs facing each other each other near the studio entrance. Taking our seats, Rachel and I introduce ourselves to a couple sitting next to us. We each begin to use a paper template in front of us to map out design ideas before gluing the mosaic tiles onto the glass globe of our respective lamps.

When our instructors indicate that it’s time to transfer the mosaic tiles and beads onto the glass, I panic. My design is ready, but it doesn’t look or feel like the images I had envisioned for the lamp prior to class. I begin to doubt the colors and shapes I’ve chosen and start to compare my design to those of our neighbors and Rachel.

This is not how this class is supposed to unfold!

To make matters worse, I cannot retain the exact design when I start to glue the mosaic pieces onto the glass. It takes gentle effort and patient precision, two things that are not included in our art supplies as my perception of time begins to contract.

“Let’s just get this over with”, my mind silently shouts as my heart sinks. The kindergartner come middle aged woman feels like she’s messing up. I try to remain positive, plastering a smile on my face and making polite conversation with Rachel and the couple next to us. Inside I feel tense but continue to diligently glue each piece into place.

The pieces are crooked with spaces between them, and the larger designs are not symmetrically spaced around the glass globe. A part of me remembers the joy of art as process over art as product, but that part is stifled by the need to finish the product in the studio time remaining.

*****

The next day, I remove the glass globe and try to fill in the spaces with the plaster provided in the take home kit. Mixing the powder with too much water, the plaster is too thin to stick to the glass. Frustrated, I proceed to wash off all the excess runny plaster. In the process, some beads fall off the glass globe.

Ugghh! This shouldn’t be happening.

Ah, but it is!

Who said that? The voice does not return till I walk away from the mess I am making.

Perfection assesses whether someone or something is worthy, worthwhile. It sees in black and white. This is either all good or all bad. Perfection thrives on fear, rigid judgments, restlessness until perfection is achieved. It’s fragmented, believing happiness resides in a limited range of experience. It’s a constant uphill climb, and forever exhausting.

Wholeness invites all aspects of a mosaic experience, understanding the picture is incomplete with any piece left out. It’s patient, allowing mental and bodily formations to communicate, as the heart bathes the experience in whatever wholesome factor is needed for unification. Wholeness perceives above below, around any fixed view to see and sense with soul, to cultivate contentment in all circumstances.

Perfection or wholeness? Where do you want to live, Kaveri? Even this dual reflection is a cause for suffering. Know that you are shaped by both, that each influences the other, and bow to the full range of life experience.

*****

I decide to walk away from the art project, reflecting on the process instead of the final product. Art is very similar to the meditation process. If my attention is tense, tight, narrow, and analytical, I will perceive the experience as unpleasant. If my attention is more relaxed, soft, expansive, and observing in nature, the experience can be neutral, maybe even pleasant.

Ideas of perfection, wholeness, process and product all swirl around in the limited space of my cranium. I take them to the meditation cushion and sit. Like pinballs, they keep bumping up against walls until there is no controller trying to save and define them. Fixed, judgmental attention transforms into relaxed, loving awareness as metta permeates through the entire space.

May I be gentle with the process.
May there be confidence in the beauty of awareness.

Just as the bell punctuates the end of the meditation sit, an insight arises. Beauty is not limited to a final work of art or an artist. It is also inherent in wholesome mind states brought to any artistic or meditative process. Viewed this way, nothing is an ugly mistake. No parts are left out.

Feeling more curious and connected to the Turkish mosaic lamp, I hold it with tenderness, patiently gluing each small bead back on one by one with crazy glue. Giving it another 24 hours to dry, I wait for my partner to help me assemble it when he has time.

What’s the rush?

Published in Pulse.

(Listen to audio version here)

(If you would like to listen to the audio version of this talk, click on the link above.)
​
​The picture changes. Have you noticed this? People, places, things I’ve loved and wanted to hold on to are no longer the same. Family pictures that we took when my daughter was a baby are different now. She’s no longer a cute little cherub, but a tall, lanky teenager complete with acne and attitude.

The picture of who I wanted to be as a mother was so radically different than who I actually was. Instead of having my shit together and nursing my daughter lovingly, I looked like I hadn’t slept for days, felt irritable all the time, blamed anyone and anything in my way (especially myself), and couldn’t breastfeed beyond about 6 weeks.

For those of you who have ever been first time parents, you know it’s challenging. Even if you haven’t been a parent, anything you take on that is new and unfamiliar can be difficult: adopting a pet, starting a new job or school, caring for an aging family member, losing a job, moving to a new place, a new medical or psychological diagnosis in you or a loved one, and so on.

But stress, discomfort, dis-ease, is not just about meeting moments of difficulty in life. We all face challenges. What makes certain ones more stressful than others? 

2600 years ago, the Buddha had a word for stress. In Pali, the language spoken by the Buddha in India at the time, the word is dukkha. Just living this human life, we know that pain is inevitable.  But the added stress is optional. There’s a saying that illustrates this point well: pain x resistance = stress. If pain is inevitable, then what adds to the stress?

It’s our resistance to what’s happening moment to moment. The desire to hold on to the way my body used to be in less discomfort and able to do certain yoga poses, the aversion to burning, searing, aching, throbbing sensations in my left gluteal muscles, sacroiliac joint and right shoulder, the delusion that none of this should be happening, that I should be able to fix it, that this experience of pain is unique to Moi and no one else has ever felt this way.

What are you currently holding on to in your life? What are you pushing away? How are you daydreaming or misunderstanding a current situation? It may help to place a hand on your heart or a part of the body that is hurting, breathing into any discomfort with as much tenderness and compassion as you can muster. If that feels awkward, then imagine a comforting presence here with you now, breathing with you, understanding you, loving you just as you are. 

With our body’s, our circumstances, the people and things in our lives ‘forever’ rotating through like a slideshow, what can we come to rely on that is real, that will provide some measure of robust comfort when the picture is always changing? How can mindful awareness frame the experience in curiosity, kindness, and remain intimately connected regardless of whether we like, dislike, or believe what we are seeing?

There’s a song that I love from high school called ‘Pictures of You’ by an 80’s band called The Cure. The lyrics start out:

I've been looking so long at these pictures of you
That I almost believe that they're real
I've been living so long with my pictures of you
That I almost believe that the pictures
Are all I can feel
 
I realize now that expectations I had of myself as a new mother, as a person with this current body, even of my daughter as they are now, are all rooted in past or future stories of what could have been, what should have been.

This moment, right here, right now can be so exquisite, unburdened by past blame or future worry. For me, The Cure for stress is to identify more with the picture frame, and not the changing picture. Easier said than done, right? It’s hard to believe this when there are constant messages and advertising of the perfect picture, the perfect body, the perfect life on Facebook, Instagram, the media and beyond.

Mindfulness practice trains us to notice when we are lost in a story that isn’t true, when emotions feel like weather systems that will last forever and are actually changing all the time, when sensations define who we are and don’t need to be taken so personally. 

Learning to identify more with the picture frame, the frame of mindful loving awareness rather than the picture of changing circumstances takes time. If you are fairly new to mindfulness practice, you may uncover thought patterns and old habits you haven’t seen before. Things can feel worse before they feel better.

Know that you aren’t crazy or doing anything wrong. This is completely normal. In firefighting, the term backdraft is used to describe the sudden introduction of air into a fire that has depleted most of the available oxygen in a room or building. Similarly, when you bring attention to patterns of desire, aversion, and delusion, they can initially feel more intense.

This is when it’s helpful to practice with the support of others- a trusted teacher or therapists, wise, loving spiritual community. I’ve also found it useful to bring a spirit of creativity, adventure, and play to these practices. Like learning to cook a dish, play an instrument, grasp a new language, ride a bike, or train yourself in any unfamiliar skill, it can feel so cumbersome if approached with rigidity or expectations of immediate results. Yuck! Who wants to do that?

And, it takes a certain amount of gentle discipline, curiosity, kindness, patience, trust, determination, care, compassion, joy, beauty, resilience, and forgivingness to keep practicing, at least in my recipe book. Your healing journey may need similar or different ingredients. You won’t know till you try, keep showing up, adding a little more of this, taking out a little bit of that.

After 15 years of practice, I still identify with the picture, and sometimes forget about the picture frame. What’s changing is the capacity of this heart-mind to notice sooner, rather than later what’s needed to frame every experience in some aspect of love. It doesn’t matter how long it takes me. What matters most is my willingness to try. I’d like to share a poem that I think speaks to this "Cure for It All" by Julia Fehrenbacher.
 
This life isn’t what I expected. This practice isn’t what I expected. And it’s inspired such a radical honesty in me to try and see things as they are. Nothing more. Nothing less.  Anything else just doesn’t make sense.

Bubbles and Butterflies by Shirley Reede

I was grateful for some quiet time to unplug from work - sit, walk, read, write, and engage with the Bikkhunis from Aloka Vihara and poems from the Therigatha on a home retreat for a few days.

 
Tissa ~ Third
 
Why stay here
in your little 
dungeon?
 
If you really
want to be free,
make 
every
thought--
a thought of freedom.
 
Break your chains.
Tear down the walls.
 
Then walk the world--
a free woman.
 
 
In the silence, a life pattern I’ve known about for some time resurfaced for contemplation.
 
I rely on specific outcomes, conditions for happiness.
 
Since the pandemic changed our way of life in March, I’m reflecting on identity, what really matters to me, and how I want to contribute to the wellbeing of others based on my own dance with life.
 
I was filled with ideas of healing hope, gift wrapping them faster than others could open and enjoy them. “Would any physician like peer support, mindfulness training? How about compassionate support? Would any patient like a mindfulness consultation, a tailored mindfulness meditation created just for you? Step right up and sign up for a mindfulness for stress shared medical appointment, or an online six-week meditation and reflective journaling class.”
“Take me out of respiratory clinic! That isn’t where my talent is. As every place is being hit hard economically, medicine is no exception. I’d like to make a living (right livelihood) offering mindfulness as medicine in addition to Western medicine.”
 
Just typing all this out and reading it aloud makes me realize how much energy I’ve directed into willing a certain outcome.  I’ve also strategically tried to plan trips when other vacation plans were cancelled for safety reasons, and constantly check my phone to see if I’m receiving emails or texts that align with my ideal future. What have I missed along the way?
 
There is so much compassion for this heart-mind that dearly loves mindfulness, not just for stress reduction, but for the deep and profound ways the teachings have changed and healed my life. Of course I am passionate about this! I just need to remember that is not the medicine for everyone. Or, the package it comes in, the way that it’s offered may not work for everyone.
 
As much as I enjoy and am committed to Western medicine for its miracles and healing opportunities, it does not always integrate body, mind and spirit the way meditation and writing do. I understand why it feels like a part of my healing energy, my creative spirit stagnates when it doesn’t flow the way I envisioned it would.
 
Life is asking me to be on the lookout for joy and wonder like a toddler delighting in summer bubbles and butterflies. Life is also asking me to get curious, to be patient, to delight in the care received from others and be on the lookout for opportunities to extend care to others. 
 
Having a distinct vision for joy, wonder, and care is not wrong. It’s the attachment for things to be a certain way that causes suffering. It’s the limiting beliefs that cause distress. Anything short or different from The Vision is a failure, not good enough, all my fault.
 
 
Letting Go (inspired by Tissa ~ Third)
 
Why stay here
in your little 
world?
 
If you really
want to be happy,
make 
every
moment,
a moment of care.
 
Open your mind.
Let go of limiting thoughts.
 
Then meet each moment
with curiosity and wonder.
 
 
May we all let go of life patterns that cause suffering. May we let go into life’s mysterious unfolding.
May we be on the lookout for joy, wonder and care in each moment.
 
(Please share information about this class with anyone interested. As I am learning to let go, I can still advertise😉!)

The Dakini Speaks
© Jennifer Welwood

My friends, let’s grow up.
Let’s stop pretending we don’t know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven’t noticed, let’s wake up and notice.
Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It’s simple — how could we have missed it for so long?
Let’s grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings,
But please, let’s not be so shocked by them.
Let’s not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.
Impermanence is life’s only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.
To a child she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion exquisitely precise:
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
This is the true ride — let’s give ourselves to it!
Let’s stop making deals for a safe passage:
There isn’t one anyway, and the cost is too high.
We are not children anymore.
The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.
Let’s dance the wild dance of no hope!
 

 
When I first heard this poem some years ago, it sounded bleak. Dance the wild dance of no hope? With a passion for beauty, creativity, singing, dancing, and music, I simply could not relate. I also couldn’t resolve the spiritual and creative parts of me that sometimes felt as odds with one another. Dhamma retreats that involved sitting, walking meditation, then more sitting and walking mediation for hours and days on end felt dry, as if something were missing. (Maybe this is why I insist on writing, sometimes singing and dancing on silent retreats when no one is looking or listening.)

Now, change and uncertainty have taken center stage. The Dakini speaks, and I am listening. Have I truly missed the deal here? I’m starting to wake up and notice. For me, uncertainty is so unsettling because of my patterns of control. Though I’ve told others this pandemic is not a sprint, but a marathon, I find myself at many imaginary finish lines hoping the race is over.

I want to travel, eat at my favorite restaurants, go on retreat, get together with family and friends, see patients in person, have my hair cut and colored, and not virtually! And I recognize these are minor inconveniences to have, as many others are suffering in real and devastating ways.

So how can I not act so shocked and grieve certain losses fully like a ripe human being? It helps to acknowledge these “losses” with honesty, without spiritually bypassing the true feelings of impatience, anger, sadness, fear, and overwhelm that may be present. The ripeness includes a clear, wise mind asking, “What’s happening now?” and a spacious, compassionate heart asking, “How am I relating to this?”

It’s important for me to remember that this practice is not perfect. Judgements and resistance still arise. All my habitual patterns of control (blaming others, blaming myself, food and retail therapy, meticulously cleaning, strategically planning) are implemented one after the other in the name of protecting the self. And so many things influence the fight-flight-freeze reaction and the tend and befriend response: physical, emotional, economic stability, practice history, etc.

Most days, I find that I am somewhere in between both physiologic processes. A quivering belly, rapid heart rate, and tense muscles are met with earth connection, warm breath, and fluid understanding of not acting so betrayed. Impermanence is life’s only promise, so what COVID-19 is teaching me is not new. I was just in denial.

Just as Toto pulled back the curtain to the great Wizard of Oz revealing an ordinary man, can I strip away the unreal and live with the real, giving myself completely to this one true ride? I’m tired of making deals for a safe passage. If there isn’t one, and the cost is too high, what does it mean to dance the wild dance of no hope? If there is no ground, what can I stand with, stand for?

I don’t have perfect, complete answers to these questions. Like many of you reading this, I’m still sensing my way into ‘answers’, trying to be as patient, honest, compassionate, and open as I can be along the way. Two words, concepts arising in meditation and life practice over the last few days are wholeness and goodness. Despite feeling broken, imperfect, and disconnected at times, I recognize that my purpose as a physician, meditation/movement practitioner, parent, and writer is not to cure everyone, but tap into an energy of healing that happens whenever the heart-mind is truly present and listening. And goodness isn’t a Pollyannish ignorance of the severe and overwhelming destruction caused by this pandemic, but stories of care I’m seeing, experiencing, and hearing about each day.

If impermanence is life’s only promise, then let my response be wholeness, goodness, and care, knowing that it is imperfect. What will your response be?
​
As you sit, stand, walk, and lie down with this ground of uncertainty, what is still true for you? The Buddha said, “Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.” May you connect with what is still true for you. May this guide you, support you, nourish you in the days and weeks to come.

(This post was inspired by Sebene Selassie, Sharon Salzberg, and Vesak.)

Marriage Mandala

I’ve waited my whole life for you
to say the right words,
to woo me with poetry
and an instrument to play
the song in my heart
that I sing to myself
when the world misunderstands.

How could I have missed
the gentle intimacy,
the drunken look in your eyes,
palms pressed in Namaste
to the sacred feminine flame,
the humble bow to your consort
in all her many moods?

Let’s circle the fire like we did long ago-
no one leading, no one following,
the earth bearing witness,
the air surrounding us offering
space to move as we must,
tears of frustration and joy marking
each brave step into the unknown.
 
Just when you think your partner isn’t looking, listening, or understanding, look again. Listen. Patiently wait for understanding based on cellular memories of gratitude. Memories of disappointment and deficiency will just weigh you down and induce amnesia for the sacred.

There is no such thing as a fairytale relationship, romantic or not. The grass is always greener in a movie, a book, or someone else’s story. For me, the magic occurs inside the heart mandala when all the moving parts invite me to look, to listen, and be patient for understanding.

I don’t always like the entangled pattern I see. The elements of earth, air, fire and water ask me to wait, to feel their presence internally and externally till the pattern alchemically transforms into something I recognize but didn’t trust before due to past conditioning.

The emerging pattern cuts through greed, hatred, and delusion with fierce compassion, gentle wisdom. All moving parts begin to settle.

The elements of wind and fire are strong in me. How do I not blow past and burn everything in the way? How do I allow the neurotic wind in this breath to be carried to the place it needs to be, rather than striving to get there? How can this passionate fire for practice burn with wise discernment?
​
Intuition, lead the way…

Why does your heart beat?

Some might answer for a lover, a child, or a pet.  Others might say it's for a profession or creative passion.  Some might think it's a silly question and respond matter of factly, "It's just what the heart does!"  Still others might answer embarrassed and confused, "I don't know..."

It might even be a combination of the above.

Reflecting on my trip to Alaska, Victoria, and Seattle, I thought I would be most affected by abundant wildlife and nature's grandeur.

I was wrong.

While Mother Nature and her beloved children were breathtaking and certainly sights to behold, they didn't strum my heartstrings as much as the stories of two women I met on the trip.

The first woman was our tour guide on a bus tour of Denali National Park.  At 21, she moved to Alaska and immediately fell in love.    Well into her 50's now, she talked about her passions with such conviction of the heart, that I could physically feel her spirit.

The second woman was a former champion of the Iditarod trail sled dog race held in Alaska each year.  She retired to the state of Montana, and recently moved back to Alaska.  She now helps train and manage Alaskan huskies for another former Iditarod champion who offers tours at his home for folks who would like to visit with the huskies, their pups, and to learn more about the Iditarod experience.

What struck me most about this woman was the animation in her body and eyes as she talked about the race.  When it came time for questions, the audience asked a lot about technicalities.  The burning question in my heart was this.

"What do you love most about the race?"

Her eyes became misty.  I sensed I had plucked a heartstring or two.  Her answer was simple.

"The dogs," she whispered.  "The way you care for the dogs, and they care for you." 

We think that we have forever.  That spectacular dress is still hanging in the back of your closet just waiting for the perfect occasion to dress her.  Your creative plans are gathering dust on your desk or in your drawer because you just aren't ready.  You've been planning to say or do something with someone who is meaningful to you, but the time is never right.

If not now, then when?

I've heard Tara Brach share in her podcasts that the biggest regret most people die with is the unlived life.  Not doing what they really wanted to do.  Not saying what they really wanted to say.  Tara offers a reflection that is quite powerful.

What if you only had a month to live?  A week?  A day?  An hour?  What would matter most?

The other day I finished watching A Little Chaos.  In one particularly scene, Andrè is lighting multiple candles in the darkness waiting for Sabine to come down and see him.  It's the perfect metaphor for his need to awaken a dying passion both physically and figuratively.

Who or what will light candles to illuminate the dark corners of your heart? Why does your heart beat?