06.01.2026. A Quiet Revolution
Hello dear Friends,
🌸 Please note: There is 1 spot open for Healing Vessel, an evening of deep, still rest and healing, on June 2. If your heart is a yes,click here.
“Wonder is not a luxury. It is a vital nutrient for the soul. It softens us. It reminds us we’re part of something bigger. It awakens humility, delight, and gratitude. It calls us out of ourselves.”
— Susan Cain
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I have fallen down an awe and wonder rabbit hole. Like an algorithm, the more I wander in wonder, the more wonder shows up on the Instagram feed of my heart. I'm head over heels in love with light — my whole life, watching light as a kid opened up a whole world of play. Dust glistening in the yawning light, stretching through churches, willow trees, and kitchen windows still stops me mid-step, stirs my heart and stills my mind.
How did June's light arrive unannounced?
Spring has become summer. Leaves wrap every tree, fireflies quietly claim the night, and warmth rises from the earth beneath our feet, our houses, our streets. I feel it settle into my body like a welcome, like Metta, surrounding me in warmth and care, opening my heart. What an exquisite dharma teacher this season of summer is, with her long days of sunlight and warm air that moves through every cell in our bodies, becoming emerald song.
What a poignant time to absorb, to intentionally sit in gardens, walk in woods, watch the natural world unfold its bloom: flowers, trees, sugar ants, kids riding free, birds splashing in puddles, our hearts loving up rain and summer's breeze. Our bodies know this ease — this quality of openness, width, and friendliness, green and balmy, everything in full and luxurious growth. Ease, the first essential gesture of the open heart. Gentleness the next. Perhaps these two are tied for first.
Both qualities invite warmth and care, like a hand on our chest activating the vagus nerve, calming and opening our hearts with a steady spaciousness — the next gesture of Metta.
Some other wonders here:
The mama rabbit who has made a burrow of soft grass and her own gray belly fur for her babies in the large pot of sage next to our front door (how lovely and wild!).
This ant I watched today: a noble tiny creature carrying something huge in its jaws, hoisted up and over its head. I couldn't name the food crumb, only that it was much bigger than its body. Flipped about, righting itself, undeterred, devoted, tireless.
Bunny and ant — small-scaled creatures in a large-scaled world, just like us, determined to do our part.
And this: the Buddha gave this teaching on Metta in the 5th century BCE as the antidote to paralyzing fear. Learning this felt like light dancing across my bedroom sheets. It stopped me mid-step. Paralyzing is a strong word — and yet.
We all know this place of fear — where we freeze, flee, fight, flop, and fawn, our sweet nervous systems trying their best to take care of us. And here we have this antidote, this practice: Metta, translated as lovingkindness, friendliness, goodwill — a "weapon" that short circuits fear, disarms our crazymaking minds, and unzips the puffy coats over our tender hearts. Meets fear with care and kindness. "A mind saturated with lovingkindness cannot be overtaken by fear."
This is no small thing.
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“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.” — Kafka
Come Practice & Be In Community
Drop-in Meditation Today. All are welcome; no prior experience is needed—just an open, tender heart.
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM: 20-minute Taking A Good Seat & “Simply Opening” and 20-minute Metta Meditation Practice
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Conversations and Nourishment for the heart, for your practice of Meditation.
Dāna: Pay What You Can. (suggested donation $10-$40 )
Location: 778 West Frontage Road, Suite 111, Northfield, IL.
Closing in warmth and care, and so thankful we are in this 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, tune Into An Infinite Universe.
☕ The Metta Lettersblooms through your support. If these words have meant something to you,Buy Me a Coffee is one beautiful way to say so. 💌 🌼
🌸 Two Poems. “Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life." – Maya Angelou
Essential Gratitude | Andrea Potos
Sometimes it just stuns you
like an arrow flung from some angel’s wing.
Sometimes it hastily scribbles
a list in the air: black coffee,
thick new books,
your pillow’s cool underside,
the quirky family you married into.
It is content with so little really;
even the ink of your pen along
the watery lines of your dimestore notebook
could be a swiftly moving prayer.
Now I Become Myself | May Sarton
Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before—"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
"Now I become myself." These five words sound simple, yet profound. These five words hold a lifetime of becoming. These five words are hard-earned. This blooming we do through the brutal, through tumble and tenderness, where we land in the stillness of who we have always been, yet strayed so far from, at times.
My meditation teacher, like the cook in the chickpea poem by Rumi, would ‘hit’ me with her teacher-wisdom "skimming spoon," keeping my toes in the fire of awakening — keeping me from jumping outside of myself. The pattern she pointed out again and again was me desperately seeking the ground of my being outside of myself. The story I told myself was if I figure it out 'out there' then "I am safe. All is well.”
A lifetime of cultivating a landscape outside of myself left me barren and parched inside, wholly lost and, like the poem, this kept me running madly, wearing other people's faces. Perhaps you know this one too?
Yes, for a time this is how we learn: we act as if and follow the scent and action of another. Then come those bifurcation moments — the soul-wrenching hurts that harvest us — and we risk following our own scent (even if shaking like a leaf), as Pema Chödrön would say: "To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest."
We stand on the precipice of our becoming, say a prayer, and fling ourselves out of the nest and discover — discover wings and flight, terror and beauty, sky and ground.
Then the final line of this poem: "I, the pursued, who madly ran / Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!" Holy amen — stand still in the center of who we are, this blessing gift we are to the world.
🌸 Three Quotes | Nick Cave. Dawna Markova. Maria Shriver.
“I know, in my heart, that if there is one thing more daunting than writing a song, it’s not writing one – and I think we can apply this to many things, a job left undone is its own torment, a dream unrealised, its own kind of hell.”
― Nick Cave, responding to a reader on fear and procrastination in The Red Hand Files, May 2026. ISSUE #365 (I found this a helpful heart read!)
“Befriending myself seems to be about opening my heart as a homeless shelter for all the destituted and prostituted aspects of my being that I have been running from for years without even knowing that's what I have been doing.”
— Dawna Markova, "I Will Not Die an Unlived Life"
🍃“On Not Giving Up”“Have you reached it yet? I mean, the place where you no longer wish to be anyone else? Do you know yet? That what wants to twine around your legs is simple joy.”
Listen to this short video poem, teaching, offering, delight this reading by Dawna Markova (2:45 min) ❧
“The Pope’s warning—and it is a warning offered with love rather than fear—is this: if we lose sight of what makes us human, we lose everything. If we begin to believe that a machine can replace a human heart, a human mind, or a human presence, we are in danger. Not because technology is evil. But because humanity is magnificent. And magnificent things require our attention and our protection.”
— Maria Shriver, Sunday Paper May 30, 2026, Pope Leo’s ‘Magnifica humanitas’: AI must serve humanity not concentrate power
🌸 Loving Up Your Heart | Two Offerings: 🐦’s and a 🎬
🐦 Open to Behold: Seeing God in Everyday Nature. Someone to know about: photographer and writer of sacred words, Therese Bach Heyek. When her offerings arrive in my inbox (oh, I cannot remember how many years now!), they are always something exquisite to behold. Here is this week's:
A fledgling red-winged blackbird gestures...
it's hungry, then anticipates nourishment...There are moments in our life when we need to cultivate patience and hope, believing that what we cannot yet see is already being arranged on our behalf.
If you, too, would like to receive a weekly Glimpse of Nature complimentary, email a request to Therese by clicking here.
🎬 “A quiet revolution is underway: As the real-world consequences of social media come into focus, a new generation of parents and teens step forward to challenge the systems shaping their lives and fight for a different future.”
This film,Your Attention Please, came to my awareness through Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer'spoem-a-day:
"I saw such a profoundly moving, disturbing, insightful, intelligent film about the effects of social media on young people — and all of us. If you get a chance to see Your Attention Please, it offers compelling reasons for why we might want to rethink our relationship with social media." — RWT
Perhaps this is our invitation to pause, to notice what is being lost, and to choose presence, to choose boredom — this is where wonder blooms.
Neuroscientists Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl, authors of Born to Flourish, call us to "digital hygiene" — regulating screen time to offset the neurological cost of constant connectivity.
“Connection is why we’re here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives.”
— Brené Brown
🌸 Closing Song | Tune Into An Infinite Universe ✨
“Let the music remind you: every note, every breath, every being is moving together. You are connected to something bigger than yourself.” If you do not know of Beautiful Chorus’s music, it is something to dive into. Have fun!
Infinite Universe (Official Video)
✨ Ask gently: “How can I offer myself a little love right now?”
🌸🙏Dedicate Merit In all mystical traditions, there is a closing prayer — prayers of blessing, gratitude, and protection.
“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.” – Rumi
May you be filled with all the wonderment of Silence.
May your heart take refuge in the Beauty of who you are.
May we bloom more compassion, peace and great tenderness within, become a source to help uplift ourselves and the world.
— 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. 💖 ✨
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Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
- Mary Oliver
Website:https://www.wininimrod.com/
