The one thing I want share about 2021 is this was a year where I really had to make conscious choices.
There was great challenge and adversity both personally and in the community as a whole. There was also opportunities for tremendous learning, growth, and for building resilience.
I’ve never seen the level of community anxiety and concern that I saw this year. The question I ask myself about this is “what do we do with this?”.
There is generally speaking, for me, a path of light and a path of darkness.
Many wise people, for thousands of years, have been thinking on this question and there is a full, robust, and very effective and helpful body of human knowledge that helps us take a path of light. Unfortunately, it is not the path that gets the most attention.
For today, I wanted to share with you a quote from the great Parker Palmer. I’ve thought a lot about these words this year.
“Suffering breaks our hearts, but the heart can break in two different ways. There's the brittle heart that breaks into shards, shattering the one who suffers as it explodes, and sometimes taking others down when it's thrown like a grenade at the ostensible source of its pain.
Then there's the supple heart, the one that breaks open, not apart, the one that can grow into greater capacity for the many forms of love. Only the supple heart can hold suffering in a way that opens to new life.”
― Parker J. Palmer, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old”
I try hard to continue to cultivate an open heart. This year, sometimes, that has been as hard as it has ever been. And this difficulty thankfully has caused in me the desire to redouble my efforts, knowing I will sometimes fail. It feels so wonderfully amazing to live in open heartedness.
Much love everyone! Wishes for a happy and healthy 2022!
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