“For a short cleanse or refresh, I like taking a shower. The heat on my back draws my attention into that part of my body, pulling me out of my head into awareness of my whole body. The agenda of life feels so hard-edged sometimes. The water is a live metaphor for washing away anything […]
Author: elizaking
What We Need is Here
“….We open a persimmon seed to find the tree that stands in promise, pale, in the seed’s marrow. Geese appear over us, pass, and the sky closes… And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What […]
Kindling our Magic
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” –W.B. Yeats Dear Folks, This week I’ve been thinking about a trip I took almost 10 years ago to the bioluminescent bay on Vieques, a little island off of Puerto Rico. One evening, we went sea kayaking with a guided […]
Let Your Compass Be Your Guide
Let your Compass be your Guide Wild Geese by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, […]
Step by Step
This week I was given an unexpected gift. A client who had been considering taking a break from coaching with me, realized that it was really her fear about the fragile economy that was influencing her decision. Because of the general economic uncertainty, she was feeling like she should stop paying for more coaching sessions. […]
Of Earthquakes and Alligators
In Mary Oliver’s ‘Alligator Poem’ she writes about almost being killed by an alligator, how, afterward, she “…rose from the ground/and saw the world as if for the second time/the way it really is.” I thought about her poem after the earthquake here in the DC area (when my house shook and rumbled I thought […]
Joyful Impressions: the Dalai Lama in DC
I was lucky enough to spend time at the Kalachakra Ceremony at the Verizon Center in DC with the Dalai Lama last month. The Dalai Lama was in DC for 11 days in July, during which he and a group of monks created a sand mandala and a sacred space in the Verizon Center with […]