4-29-2007
You’ve been in my thoughts and prayers a lot lately. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to not have the use of an arm.

In a way, we each are confronted with the same dilemma: how to feel the pain of living without denying it and without letting that pain define us. Ultimately, no matter what burden we are given – a broken arm, an imprisonment, the loss of worldly goods, feelings of depression – once whittled to the bone, we are faced with a never ending choice: to become the wound or to heal.

Just as a vine or a shrub – no matter how often it is cut back – will keep growing to the light, the human heart, no matter how often it is cut – can reassert its impulse to love.

And so…let’s reassert our impulse to feel and express the loving energy that surrounds us, the energy that we are.

Enclosed is an essay called “Flying Lessons.” On the surface, it may seem inappropriate to write of flying when our wing is broken, but perhaps that is the best time to approach it. We’re all like birds who have forgotten that we have wings.

Sometimes when I’m out on the recreation field, I watch the hawks fly. It seems as though they just stretch their wings out and allow the wind to carry them for miles. I watch in awe of the majest and freedom they show as they go higher and higher without moving a feather. Wings outstretched as they are effortless lifed. It is beautiful. It reminds us to give ourselves permission to allow the universe to lift us higher.

May we feel a little more of the magic of being alive today and may we spread our wings and allow the wind to take us to heights we’ve never known before.