05.11.2026. Human Superpower
Hello dear Friends,
"Our mother's real gift to us is her smile and her affectionate warm-heartedness."
– Dalai Lama
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Mother's Day has just passed, a glorious day for some, a hard day for others. It feels both tender and sweet and complicated and complex, this subject of celebrating ‘mother’. With each year that passes, perhaps because of aging and growing old, my definition of mother is widening. Once exclusively held for one, my mom who birthed me, who fiercely claimed me the day I was born, almost died. My mother, who while being given Last Rites, told the priest, "Go to hell, I'm having a baby." It is a long story, but we both survived. This imprint of fierce claiming and calling me into form, I'm so grateful for. This action, this fierce naming, is perhaps at the heart of what Mother's Day is all about: the mothering-othering we each do.
This mothering as a verb goes way beyond gender, way beyond bloodlines, overflows into all the people in our lives who love us up. You know the ones in yours, I know the ones in mine.
Yes, sometimes, if we are lucky, this is our actual birth mom, and for others there is a miss there. And this is where the gorgeousness of human comes in: it is never too late to have the greatness of mother-heart in our lives, for this is what we do for each other. We hold care. We stay awake with fevers, aches, and worries. We tend and see each other with our penetrating "mother-other" eyes, that see through and into the black pupils, we mother-other and love each other up as a verb. We meet each other there–in the spaces between the letters L O V E.
If we look around, there are so many "mothers" in our lives. It is really something astounding.
It's like how my son just shared, on our Sunday family call, he heard Cynthia Erivo speak. She shared how we are taught to prepare for the 'no's but not really for the 'yes's. And if we really look around in our lives, there are a million and one little yesses all around us. Same with mother-others! It's this darn brain wired for negativity that jumps in our sight at times.
But, there is this smell of mother love known that runs wild and free in our nervous systems too. It is incorruptible, maybe it smells like honey and salt mixed together, maybe it’s sweet like holy water, maybe it’s this thousand names for God. But this I know: it is a scent that is felt in the body, indescribable. I know it is near when I feel this wash of soft, gentle care and kindness, even if it is fierce at times, this consistent othering, not perfect, loving. Mothers in all forms. All who caress our planet with more goodness, magnify and mirror the greatness of Light. This is our human superpower!
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Drop-in Meditation Today. All are welcome; no prior experience is needed—just an open tender heart.
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM: 10-minute Taking A Good Seat and 20-minute Metta Meditation Practice
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Closing in warmth and care, a heart of gratitude, and so thankful we are in this complex time together.
Love, Wini
PS: May the poems, quotes, and the links below offer sparks of inspiration and beauty for your soul.
♥️ and this closing song, Song of the Cedars... lovely!
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🌸 Two Poems. “I really believe that poetry is something we humans need almost as much as we need water and air. We can forget this.” ― Krista Tippett
The temple bell stops | Matsuo Basho trans Robert Bly
The temple bell stops–
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.
This is what was bequeathed us | Gregory Orr
This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.
No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.
No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.
No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.
That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.
🍃 the beloved’s clear Instructions: Turn me into song; sing me awake.
And this here—listen to Gregory Orr read his poem. What a beautiful offering his voice is, speaking words that are clear instructions for this being human, this world, beautiful and the scarred: Turn me into song, sing me awake.
click here(1:41 min)
🌸 Three Quotes | Jack Kornfield. Suleika Jaouad. Pema Chödrön.
“In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?”
―Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book
“I used to think love was proven over time—accumulated, measured in years. But this has me reconsidering. Maybe love has nothing to do with time at all. Maybe it’s the decision to show up fully for something fragile and fleeting, even when you know it will break your heart. Especially then.”
– Suleika Jaouad, Substack, The Isolation Journals
“Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important. The reason it’s important is that, fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn’t just ourselves that we’re discovering. We’re discovering the universe.”
― Pema Chödrön,When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
🍃Sometimes there are go-to-books—books you return to, reread a passage or chapter again and again. Books you may never even open again, but they stand tall, prominent on your bookshelf; just seeing them there reminds you of the heart they hold. This is such a book.
If you have not read When Things Fall Apart, it is one to purchase.
If you are needing care, this book is one to tuck by your bed, absorb a chapter or even one line or two slowly, letting words offer ‘human’ for your heart and soul.
Who does not know the uncertainty of this life, the sufferings of change (good and bad), and the cut-to-the-bone moments of life? This is the learning we are all called to unfold: how to befriend and be gentle with our tender selves. A book that teaches ‘gentle.’
Good to Know About–Ask Pema Series: If sitting with Pema is on your bucket list, do not miss this one-hour live call opportunity. This event will take place Sunday, July 12, 2026, from 1:00–2:30 p.m. (EDT). Click here to learn more.
🌸 Some Blooms For Your Heart | Four Shares 🌼 🌱 🌷 🌿
Let your heart be where your feet are. “It is a cut-open heart that leads you to God.” Omid Safi devoted to this core teaching in Persian spirituality: to feel what is here. The grief. The longing. The ache of the world as it is. What does love have to say to us today?
"Don't pray for water.
Pray for thirst." - RumiBecause it is the thirst itself that leads us to the water of life. Click here to listen
“I wanted to come back to it..” I love The Red Hand Files by Nick Cave, perhaps you too? His Ask Questions section:
This one spoke into my heart and, like Nick here, it kept calling me back to reread. It is this "breaking open" of a heart to the "outrageous beauty" found in grief and loss, “these apprentices of loss are the holy ones who, for an excruciating time, live in acute and shocking proximity to the essence of things.”
Click here to read ISSUE #363 / MAY 2026.
Regarding the second question: Bruce, who had Philip Guston as his teacher. I have a soft spot for Guston; Mark asked me to marry him under a Guston painting, one of my favorite painters, during my "only wear black," making-large-oil-paintings days.
A plea for our world: “Earth Hymn” song for the edge of a field with Yo-Yo Ma (5:17 min)
Spaces between keep calling to me:
between notes.
between the in-breath and out-breath.
between loving and kindness. .
between tree limb and leaf.
between bitter and sweet
between this touch of love and ache.
between each letter, each word, each prayer we utter out between our lips.In the spaces between the notes, life happens. 🎶✨ Experience the breathtaking intimacy of Menahem Pressler performing Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp Minor. Click here to listen.
🌸 Closing Song | Song of the Cedars: Voice, Prayer and Awe
“Trees, speak in your leaves, please
And streams, tell me your dreams
Trees, speak in your leaves, please
Birds, sing me your rhymes, please
And stones, teach me your times”
Written in high camp while sitting around a fire, listening to forest sounds. Click here to listen (5:17 min)
“Song of the Cedars” interweaves the forest’s cicada creaks, dove coos, and bat clicks with human lyrics written by Robert Macfarlane (author of Is a River Alive?) and sung by Cosmo Sheldrake and Giuliana Furci.
🌸🙏Dedicate Merit | In all Mystical traditions, there is a closing prayer – prayers of blessing, gratitude and protection.
May you smell the "million and one little yesses" blooming in your day.
May you feel the fierce and gentle warmth of those who "mother-other" you, holding you steady in the spaces between the letters of love.
May you know your beauty Light, your own incorruptible Belonging.
May all beings be safe and protected; this I wish for everyone.
May we awaken fully to help all beings.
– Love, Wini
Have a blessed day 💖
🌸 PS. You can find all the newsletters archived on my website.
These newsletters will always be free—and if you appreciate receiving these weekly sparks of tender-goodness please consider offering your support through Buy Me a Coffee, 🌸 venmo (Winifred-Nimrod) 🌸 or zelle (wininim@gmail.com) 🌸
Thank you, I am a one-woman, two-finger typing, unfolding her thousand-petal bloom.
✨ May we bloom more Light.
💞 May we grow more Goodness for the healing of all.
🌎 May each of us thread our heart-tenderness, our Beauty, into the fabric of our planet.
….Until next week. 💖 ✨
--
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
- Mary Oliver
Website:https://www.wininimrod.com/
