Welcome to Growing in Place. In these coming days, I’ll be offering some videos of poems and reflections as I shelter in place with my wife Susan, and our beloved yellow lab, Zuzu. I’ll be back on the road when it’s safe for us to gather again. Until then, I hope you’ll enjoy the videos. Please feel free to share as inspired. Many blessings, Mark
Today would have been my father’s 100th birthday. He passed seven years ago, yet I keep learning from him. We used to sail and he taught my brother and I how to prepare for our journeys and to care for the tools we would need. Looking back, I see how his ways taught me things that took many years to appreciate, such as learning to break patterns. A simple exercise in untangling a rope would lead me years later to embrace patterns and habits, to gently work with them, in order to break them. Today’s sharing is a poem I wrote for him, Feeling the Oar, from my book, REDUCED TO JOY.
REDUCED TO JOY is a book of poems about the nature of working with what we’re given til it wears us through to joy. Today we are called upon to shelter in place, to embrace the times, as challenging as this is. I hope you are well and safe and with loved ones as we make our way through this time. I remain committed to the resources of our inner life and to the life of our connection. Touching into both can strengthen us as move through the fear. We are more together than alone. Be well, Mark