Life with Grace
Heaven Passes Through a Teapot
In limbo…
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Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -17:59
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In limbo…

Death and rebirth…

Good morning everyone,

It is now January 13 of 2025. I am not in my usual space this morning…

My special tea nook looking out amongst the pine trees at the top of the road. I am looking out at the desert landscape. And it's beautiful. I have my bowl of tea and it's warm. It’s hot. And I'm looking at my house keys It's a remembrance that is what these house keys are staring back at me alongside the tender wisps of smoke rising from the incense stick close by. Amma, a photo of Amma presiding and tea, of course, is the guest of honor.

These fires, these fires in Los Angeles. What I have left are the glorious images of my beautiful home and my mind all the memories locked away up there in my mind for now until time until time inevitably begins to blur these beloved memories that are so alive and vibrant right now into postage-sized stamps.

I can still smell the roses I wake up each day and greet the white ones especially. Meeting God in all the flowers and the trees on the land. I have been saying what a blessing and enjoy it's been to be able to live amongst the wild. A feast for my eyes every single moment of every single day in this beloved land in Topanga. The wise ones say that this is all a part of it. The cycle of life and death rebirth and death is in constant motion. Mother nature shows us this, coaxing us to remember that we are of this cycle itself. There's no escaping it. Yet our incarnation into this earthly realm in a human life sui,t in a meat suit, I like to think, has a hard time grasping this as a hard reality. And if we try to use our brains to understand it, we will fall deeper into despair. But if we can shift downwards, walk on the path, the long, well-worn path back into the cave of our own heart, this is simply what we intrinsically know. What we, my family has lost echoes countless families, devastated by these ravaging fires in LA in some ways, we all have lost our homes.

My family and I and I have lost our home, all of our belongings minus the ones we had grabbed in the momentary frenzy that we grabbed on the way out. Much of what we grabbed doesn't make sense now, like these house keys I am staring at. There's no door left. A wonder how long I will hold on to the set of simple keys be received only a mere few months ago.

We had recently moved back onto the beloved land to a house yet unfinished. We were a week away, actually from being able to take what is left of our belongings and these containers that's been sitting on the land. To move them and start to sift through them, back into our closet My husband was so excited to land back into his office space. His his man room, his nest. It has been an incredibly long time. Two and a half years since he's had a place of his own to settle back into and you know, and do the do, tend his inner garden. For a Capricorn double Virgo, this space to land is of utmost importance for his soul. A couple nights before we moved, I remember after the kids went to bed, looking at what he had chosen for the handles, the handle bars of his drawers…we had decided on this very organic um brass raw styled one…which is so indicative of our family a little wild, a little organic, a little refined as I'd like to think. But raw, you know. I was anticipating the joy to have a closet space for the clothing that I had whittled down, a closet space for my dresses that I love to wear. Excited at the thought of being able to once again have the opportunity to cleanse, pare down even more and only keep the things that truly spark joy. We have been on this inner journey to lessen over the last few years, to lighten up the load, to set down, to release ourselves from the material grip and has been tremendously hard. I was able to shift to accumulating things recently that spoke true to my heart and things that had meaning like beautiful tea ware to serve the community bowls of life and clarity. This new set of pans I was so happy to begin cooking in for my family as nourishment is my love language. New plates and bowls, and they matched. I donated the mismatched ones and gave some to my mother. And I know while these are material, these choices were significant because they were thought through and were intentional. And after two and a half years of floating without our home, I was finally back in and I was ready to land.

The land was nine days short of welcoming our community and the ceremonial space we were pushing so hard to complete was getting there. And I had just planted, I don't know now, eighty plants, flowers and trees to fortify the ecosystem I had been tending over the years and restoring over the years. These two beautiful magnolia trees that I just planted outside of our ceremonial space. They were they were magenta and and and fuchsia and ready to bloom. And I really wanted so much for the feasting my eyes got to delight in to be shared by everyone. And I was sharing with my friends Benny and Maia last night on a video…I haven't been able to really see anyone or get on the phone. So I sent them a video because they sent me a video and I was thinking out loud on that video that maybe I got too attached, you know, too identified with a bounty and the beauty of the land, too identified with my home, and too attached to my desires. Too identified, too attached, that it all had to be taken away for me to remember the truth of all of this, the truth, the way the Tao. This has been a tremendous lesson in non-attachment and a tremendous lesson in sitting and being able to or trying to be able to hold the polarities of life, the grief and the sorrow and the incredible gratitude that we do, in fact, have everything that we need and we are safe and we are held and we are scaffolded by this beautiful community that we have nurtured and kept close over the years. New friends, old friends that are coming up to send us a kind message and these messages are and have been the band- aid. The bandage, the balm for my heart. And sometimes they're really hard to look at because it just brings me to tears and and part of me is still battling, you know, do I fall apart in tears or do I keep it all together and put one foot in front of the other? And just like the polarities, I just mentioned, I can do both, I guess. I haven't figured out how. It feels like I have to choose one or the other.

And so the Tao, the way, the way of Tea, the way of life, simply the way…what is the way…? If I lean into the Way, I lean into floating. Floating along with it.

And so I float with this current of my life.

I am light right now.

My bags are empty.

I have a blank slate to draw upon to envision once again.

I have an incredible opportunity for me to pay even closer attention to what Spirit has for me in this one precious life.

My family is safe. We are fine. We are good. We have enough.

My children bless them. Bless their little hearts. This is, if I can stay detached enough, to know that this is all a part of their own karma, too, and this is feeding into their dharma. They also have been floating for much of their life and they had also just landed back home. We haven't had furniture or gotten furniture for their rooms yet, and it didn't matter because they had a soft bed. They had a place to land. They had a beautiful window where they could look out and see the same feast my eyes got to see every day.

And for now I sit, I am grateful I can still sit with a bowl of tea.

I am grateful for the tea community that has reached out to I don't know to send me some basics so I can sit and have a bowl of tea and share a bowl of tea with whoever wants to sit with me. It all sounds so I don't know, simple, and maybe that's that's what it is. We all needed to simplify.

We all need to we all need to simplify. Walk light on this earth tend to her.

And so I sign off today as this is getting long and I hear stirring upstairs. I have to start getting the kids ready for their online schooling that begins today. My first time doing this online schooling and we'll see where the wind takes us. Maybe for a double Capricorn, I'm so used to being a stick in the mud. I'm really good at grounding. Maybe now it's time to just let my toes lift and let myself float and see where the wind takes me.

I love you all. I am thinking of everyone that is still in Los Angeles amongst the fires, whether you lost your home or whether your home is safe. Everyone knows someone that is in devastation. So my my plea for support is to go and offer extend your hand. Extend love, extend kindness, anything. The firefighters, I know are fighting on the ground. These fires and the Topangans. Oh my goodness, my beloved community. I cherish you. I kiss the ground you walk on. I am on my knees in gratitude for the brigade. I like to think of the Topanga brigade that is there organizing serving, opening homes to firefighters to rest and to eat and to sleep not just in their vehicles in the cold, but to actually have a warm bed to rest so they are nourished and they can start again to protect our community. I love you all so much. and until we see each other again for a bowl of tea I love you all.

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” ~ Oscar Wilde

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