06.08.2026, Just This
Hello dear Friends,
“May we find our foundation in the work of love;
demanding, tiring, true and human and holy.”
— Pádraig Ó Tuama
🍃
A nothing thing, really, just a question tucked behind the barista counter at a Biggby Coffee somewhere outside of Jackson, MI, somewhere along Interstate Highway 94. Somewhere we just randomly stopped for a bathroom break and coffee, midpoint on our five-hour drive home from my husband’s mother's funeral.
Just a question written in white chalk on a black chalkboard: "Trivia: What is the angle of the earth's axis that is responsible for the changes of seasons?"
Just conversation while waiting for two coffees, talking to the barista, maybe in her early twenties or so, me wondering what the answer was. She said, “I'm pretty sure it is 23.5 degrees.” Which she then confirmed with the three other twenty-something employees.
A nothing thing, really, just this small fifteen-minute exchange, this wondering, with the barista behind the counter talking trivia: talking, “a group of frogs is called an army,” and “Alaska was purchased from Russia.” Talking, “whoever closes that night leaves a new trivia question on the chalkboard for the morning crew to find.” Talking, “have you ever been to Alaska?” “Yes,” I said, “my cousin lives there.” She said, “I think I'd like to go one day.”
A nothing thing, really, and just everything.
Everything that makes human being human so painfully exquisite — the small, really, nothingness of everydayness. This simple meeting of another human with bills to pay, birthdays to celebrate, feet that ache from working all day, and loved ones to bury.
This life we all know, full of the rough and ragged and the soft, tender smooth — so, so ordinary, "demanding, tiring, true and human and holy,"
and this life, so, so sweet.
Here with my own butter-soft tears, my own begging bowl prayers: may I meet this ordinary world, common and astonishingly uncommon, and open to it again and again.
Some days I miss it, caught in a cloud of anxious to-do's and worries, and some days I just get in my car and weep, taken by wonder, taken by tenderness of it all; taken by trivia questions handwritten on a black chalkboard and a barista chatting unencumbered while making two whole milk lattes, rewilding the ground of my heart where everything is slipping and nothing is slipping.
“There is some kiss we want with our whole lives.”
— Rumi
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, a bright lift for your heart!
☕ The Metta Lettersblooms through your support. Please consider making a small donation. Buy Me a Coffee 💌 🌼
🌸 Two Poems. “Meanwhile, someplace in the world, somebody is making love and another a poem.” — Maria Popova
Compassion | Miller Williams
Have compassion for everyone you meet,
even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit,
bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.
Lead | Mary Oliver
Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.
🍃 Are you willing?
This seems to be the essential question: Are we willing?
Are we willing to let this life, precious and brief, break us open?
Are we willing to taste the long savoring of this world in all its complexity: its dust-ash and knockout blooms?
We do not get to pick and choose what is given to us; we know this to be true. But we do get to choose how we hold the forgiving energies of the "both-and" of this life, like holding two baby birds in our upturned palms—the soft and the hard, the tender and the brittle, the gentle and the sharp edges of life.
This we do get to pick and choose, this not-so-easy willingness to be broken open by the wonder of it all, the “even so” Raymond Carver speaks to in his poem “Late Fragment.”
🌸 Three Quotes | Nick Cave. Ursula K. Le Guin. Anne Lamott.
“I have noticed that the discomfort with how I present myself has faded a little in recent years. I suppose we grow older, weather difficult times, and somewhere along the way that morbid introspection subsides. It has been replaced, it seems, by a growing compassion and acceptance of myself.”
― Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files, June 2026. ISSUE #367
🍃 Perhaps I resonate with this because of age, because of the blur of time, because at some point in our lives it seems to be the only kind, essential response to hold for ourselves and others, compassion—to put down the sword we turn on ourselves and use it instead to slay and cut open the patterns that are running our hearts amok.
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“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”
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"So how do you connect with the real person inside you... You just… stop. You do what I call the “sacrament of ploppage”—you sit down, and you start to realize that everything electronic will usually work again if you just unplug it. And that includes you, too."
— Anne Lamott, Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage
🍃 “The sacrament of ploppage.” Sometimes the medicine needed is a good dose of Anne Lamott’s on-the-earth, holy ground wisdom. Her words cut down the invasive weeds growing in my heart.
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🌸 Two Events | A Book Tour 📚 and A Film Screening 🎬 in Chicago
📚 The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary by Terry Tempest Williams
Many of you have read her book, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice. This is my second read—I tend not to be a rereader, but I found it super lovely and inspiring to dive back into this favorite. To read my notes in the margin, to notice what caught my heart then, and now, this second time around.
The Glorians, a new book by Terry Tempest Williams I am diving into, having just heard her interviewed by Parker Palmer—a beloved author, teacher, interviewer, and Substack writer whom I do not miss. Here is the interview:
Between the Lines: "Persisting Against All Odds" with Terry Tempest Williams & Parker J. Palmer
For those in Chicago: Part of her book tour includes a stop in the Windy City! Terry Tempest Williams will be speaking Monday, June 15, at the Chicago Public Library. It’s a free event, and I am heading down after Metta next Monday.
🍥 Another in person offering if you are near Chicago: The Pink Pill: A Screening Presented by Midlife Upgrade
This special event features a private screening of The Pink Pill: Sex, Drugs & Who Has Control, followed by a live panel discussion with leading physicians and advocates.
Hosted by my dear friend Julie Fedeli, creator of Midlife Upgrade along with Pam DeRose. When: Wednesday, June 17. Where: Highland Park, IL. Learn more here
🌸 Closing Song | Brighter Day ✨
Does your heart need a lift? This is your song by Michael Franti & Spearhead.
Brighter Day (Official Music Video)
Don't give up when your heart is weary
Don't give up when your eyes are teary
Don't give up when your voice is trembling
This song came my way from my dear friend Leslye Colvin—someone to know about. She is a creator of magic, a finder of beauty, a writer, a spiritual companion, and a contemplative activist.
🌸🙏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 the ordinary bless your day.
May your heart be rewilded by wonder,
taken by the small and beautiful nothingness,
the astonishment of the so ordinary of life.May you hold the rough and ragged
with the soft, tender smooth of this life.
— 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/
