01.20.2025. No Inauguration Poem
Hello dear Friends,
There will be no inauguration poem today.
There will be no in-person Metta Meditation practice the next two Mondays,
January 20th & 27th (I will be out of town).
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Last Friday, the Ask-for-a-Word mini-retreat was tender, sacred time, invitation time: To lay down last year’s worries and fears. To lay down old ways, old patterns rooted in grasp, clutch, and claw that wired us into strive, fortified the outer shell of being. To lay down with grace and gratitude, the outdated words that no longer serve. New words, ways, arrived on “kindness confetti” like fireflies shimmering blinking light long into the fresh summer eve night, illuminating anchoring words to be divine teacher for this threshold year.
If you are asking, “how do I receive my word as guide for my year?”
Here, a few ways to help make your word known, trust it will arrive as a quiet surprise:
Pay attention to synchronicities around you.
Notice poems, images, songs that shimmer, that make your heart stir, your eye’s water (tears are always a sign it is near).
Notice what makes you uncomfortable, calls you to toe into your ‘challenge zone’, to go beyond the known edges of your life, calls to you to be an edge-walker.
Share with a soul friend. Have a conversation, share your soul’s longing, its desire and hunger.
“At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it?”
— John O’Donohue
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So grateful we are here together.
Love,
Wini
🌸 May the offerings below be warmth and care for your heart: 2 Poems. 3 Quotes. 1 Oscar Nominated Short film. 1 Breathing App. 2 Closing Song + links sprinkled throughout to explore.
🌸 Two Poems to Share
Quaker Worship: The Metaphor Moves in Two Directions | Jeanne Lohmann
1.
We come into this stillness
like snowfall, the air
alive with angels, every
blessed flake singular and
mysterious, what's outside
quiet now, and changing
form. Quickening, we
breathe silence. Presence
holds our lives in hush.
Light dazzles. Listening,
we learn to answer,
and we keep each other warm.
2.
Silence wraps us close. We're
comforted, although the angry world
is cold. We love the spell
of falling snow, and tell
how beautiful it is
inside together here
with God
who may want us
wiser, other,
clumsy great Saint Bernards
rising from beside the fire to go out
across blizzard mountains,
carrying rescue into the wild air.
Everything That Is Divided | James Crews
Everything that is divided, split,
must eventually reveal the softness
at its center, like milkweed pods
that seem dead at the edge of winter,
the fluff of a seed still clinging
like hope—no, like faith to the stem
of a plant that knows it will go on,
this is not the end of the story,
even if those days of monarchs
and blossoms filled with nectar
and caterpillars feasting on leaves
are over for now. The plant has
learned to see the possibility in each
small thing we offer to the world.
🌿 An offering for your day, whenever you are reading this:
May we learn to see the seed of possibility, the seed of hope, the seed of care, in each small kind thing we offer out into our tender, complicated world. Knowing we too are the milkweed pod who has released her seeds to ride, scatter wildly on the winds. May they land on fertile ground (some always do).
🌸 Three Quotes | Simone Weil. Francis Weller. Catherine Faith MacLean.
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” — Simone Weil
“This is a season of remembering the ancient rhythms of soul. It is a time to become immense....to recall how embedded we are in an animate world—a world that dreams and enchants, a world that excites our imaginations and conjures our affections through its stunning beauty. Everything we need is here…” — Francis Weller in IN THE ABSENCE OF THE ORDINARY
“Hope shines as a solitary star; love is the inner light. You and I together mirror the light of lights and illumine the pathway home.” —Catherine Faith MacLean
🌿 may we illumine the pathway together. May we keep being enlivened by this world’s stunning beauty. May we give our full attention to one another, this alone may heal our hearts and world.
🌸 Something to Inspire | Best Short Film – Animated.Oscars Nomination 2025
22-year-old Japanese animated filmmaker Kei Kanamori's film, “Origami/ 折紙” which depicts pieces of square paper transforming into various creatures, is something quite exquisite to watch.
May it unfold in you like these simple single pieces of color paper, folding, creasing, much like us humans; a series of folds and forms that become the landscape of our being, of our magnificence and beauty.
“exploring the infinite possibilities of origami to bring life and wonder to the simplest material.”
Give a Watch Here (2:55 min)
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🌸 Something to Know About | The Breathing App
A dear member of the Metta Community shared this “Breathing” app last week. Sharing on. The Breathing App that guides you through resonance breathing. Shortlisted as one of the best meditation apps by Wirecutter in 2023.
“The Breathing App is the result of a decade of breath and health science. It is the one simple practice that improves wellbeing by reducing stress and increasing resilience.”
Good to know. Available on both Apple Store and Google Play.
It is amazing to realize that this is available– apps for helping the body, mind and heart calm and heal– among all the rubble of sorrow and devastation too.
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🌸 Two Closing Song | Sending You Light + The Way Knows.
Both of these songs were sent my way via my ‘Quad’ of sacred soul friends who have a fierce commitment to waking up. May these songs offer you solace today, offer warmth and care, peace and compassion for your heart.
Song One: Be warned. A transmission song, you will want to send to all you know and love. SENDING YOU LIGHT by Melanie DeMore performed with Julie Wolf (5:13 min).
Give your heart some tender care, watch all-the-through it is exquisite to absorb, to watch, to let her voice land into your bones and rest into Beauty-beyond, and maybe a few tears.
For what else is there at the end of the day, but sending each other light to hold and heal each other in love.
Lyrics:
I am sending you Light, To heal you, To hold you
I am sending you Light, To hold you in Love
I am sending you Light, To heal you, To hold you
I am sending you Light, To hold you in Love
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Song Two: The Way Knows (3:40 min) by Lyndsey Scott.
Lyrics:
You don’t have to know the way, the way knows the way
You don’t have to plan the way
Trust the way, feel your way
The way knows, the way knows
The way knows the way
Listen on YouTube here
Lyndsey Scott: “When I was growing up, my mama made up songs for everything. Potty training? Sing about it. Your heart’s deepest longing? In song. I learned: like birds, we sing. Simple plain, because we’re alive. For me Song is a protection mantle, a wise friend, a presence meditation, a comic relief. Song anchors us in our breathing bodies, resonant chambers. Song lives in the crosshairs of Right Here + Right Now.”
“Song is how I play and pray.”
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✨ bloom more Light
💞 more Goodness
🌎 more gorgeous-tenderness on our planet.
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….Until next week. 💖 ✨
