06.23.2026. A Revolution Has Begun 💌
Hello dear Friend,
"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?"― Dorothy Day
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This quote by Dorothy Day was written in 1963 — which could easily have been written for our current day — she continues on to answer: "When we begin to take the lowest place, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers with that burning love, that passion, which led to the cross, then we can truly say, 'Now I have begun.'"
Praise for a revolution of the heart! Praise this revolution starting with each one of us! Yet this is easier said than done. "Sounds simple, yes, not easy" — there are a million and one roadblocks, and zipped-up puffy coats over our tender hearts. This, perhaps, is our most sacred work: unzipping!
Perhaps this unblocking of our hearts is the most worthy revolution of our time — this turning toward the broken, toward the tucked-away, tenderhearted; toward kindness and love for self and other; and opening — this is not idiot compassion, which is misguided kindness, as my meditation teacher would consistently warn me of and is a workaround with love — confusing it with good, and confusing kind with nice, using it to avoid conflict, seek approval, not make waves, make everything shiny, good, and happy-happy, cozy and nice.
But this, you and I know, does not serve someone's heart growth — the uncomfortable "ughs" of life that unfold us, roll us in mud, and bloom us wider than ever dreamed possible. Praise for this truth!
This is why I have been falling in love with the practice of the RAIN meditation, a tool to help wake up the wiring of the contracted brain — old wirings and belief systems, and habituated patterns that no longer serve. It is a delight to splash about in RAIN!
This acronym RAIN — Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture — creates a temenos of magic and these four steps interrupt what meditation teacher Tara Brach calls "the trance of unworthiness," a forgetting of the truth of who we are, rooted in self-judgment and shame. This trance of unworthiness is what harms us and those we love. It is beyond painful to experience the shame, self-judgment, the damage it does. Not only is it a lie, it is one of the biggest obstacles to this much-needed revolution of the heart, to burning love for self and others. I feel my fierceness here, for any human being not knowing, myself included, not being seen, heard, relished in their beauty-gift, this makes me weep.
Some tender things to share that arose in last week's Metta: RAIN begins here, with a gentle hand on your own heart. This simple gesture is so ordinary, yet extraordinary. It slows things down, like the exquisiteness of following the inhale and exhalation of breath, and resting in the spaciousness of pause. As my meditation teacher would say, 'Pause' could be a life practice to take on within itself.
The R in RAIN is to Recognize what's going on: "Oh, anxiety, anger, sadness" — name what is in the 'room' of your heart, and welcome all of it. Much like the beloved 13th-century Persian Rumi poem "The Guest House," welcome it all — "a joy, a depression, a meanness, the dark thought, the shame, the malice, a crowd of sorrows."
"Welcome and entertain them all! Treat each guest honorably; each has been sent as a guide from beyond." This welcoming, this bowing to each as an honorable guest, is the A in RAIN: Allowing.
Allow is the pause within the pause.
"What we resist, persists." This is the second step for this on-the-spot, go-anywhere-with-you practice, RAIN — when you are driving in rush-hour traffic and the person behind you is on your bumper, or when standing in the "12 Items Only" checkout lane and the person in front of you clearly has over 20. RAIN works with small showers of irritations and large storms of fears — RAIN is a tool for both.
"Somebody says a mean word and something in you tightens. That's the hook. If you can catch it right there, you have a choice. If you don't catch it, you will take the bait and get completely pulled in." — Pema Chödrön
RAIN opens space in the body — "the something in you that tightens." This is the beauty of the I of RAIN, Investigating: it is primarily somatic. "The issues are in your tissues" — this discovery of where experiences live in our body, and then we have a chance. This I know, without a doubt. For after working with the body for over thirty years — touching and listening to its whispers, following its directions — our bodies are an unshakeable well of wisdom; it is, as Alice Miller says, as incorruptible as a child.
When we meet the soma of the body, we meet humanity. We feel. We feel the skin of being human — full of heartbreaks and celebrations, full of despair, unimaginable pains, and heart-stopping, knock-your-breath-out beauty. RAIN waters us. The heart chakra, radiates summer green, and everything is shimmering alive. Consecrated.
"Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength."— Saint Francis de Sales
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Come Practice & Be In Community
Drop-in Meditation Today. All are welcome; no prior experience is needed
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM: 20-minute RAIN (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nature) Reconnect to Your Deep Wisdom and Caring Heart. 10-minute Metta Meditation Practice
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Deepening Into the tool of RAIN (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nature) Stepping Out of Reactivity.
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 is one to play on repeat!
☕ Please consider making a small donation, Buy Me a Coffee 💌 The Metta Letters bloom reaches wider with your support.
🌸 Two Poems. “Poetry is a moment of awe, a moment of silence that is transported from one body to another by means of language.” — Ilya Kaminsky
Wheat | Ishihara Yoshiro
Let a stalk of wheat
be your witness
to every difficult day.
Since it was a flame
before it was a plant,
since it was courage
before it was grain,
since it was determination
before it was growth,
and, above all, since it was prayer
before it was fruition,
it has nothing to point to
but the sky.
Remember the incredibly gentle wheat stalk
which holds its countless arrows fixed
to shoot from the bowstring --
you, standing in the same position
where the wind holds it.
Psalm 6:17 AM | Winifred Nimrod
Everything is slipping, she says.
What do you mean? he asks,
reaching across bedsheets
and years. She takes
this hand she knows
intimate as morning prayer.
She traces calluses, flesh mounds,
scars from slips of tools
and kitchen knives.
She memorizes palm lines,
tries to tie threads of memory,
catch hindwings of butterflies
slipping through.
Afraid
she’ll forget
the press of him,
the press of her,
forget the friction
of long marriage
and love against her skin.
His eyes, sea glass blue,
entwine her,
we’ll take what comes.
Morning light slips in
through curtain seams,
cracks in time, and this
unmade bed of loss and love.
🍃 This falling away of everything. Everything we love, dissolving and opening, folding in and unfolding to this wide, complete, sacred unknown, that we as humans each walk and bow to. The heartbreak and celebration. This is prayer.
🌸 Three Quotes | Andrea Gibson. Ram Dass. Henry David Thoreau
“When you think about what you want to do with your life, do not rule out what scares you.”
― Andrea Gibson, Calais High Commencement Address (16:46 min)
"As long as you think that what you are looking for is outside yourself, it will never be enough. What do you need to make it all right? Every label you have of what you think you need is all a statement of who you think you are and that all turns out to be wrong."
― Ram Dass
“A single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. ”I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees”
🍃 Thoreau knew then what we know now—the beauty of return and neuroplasticity: the discipline and effort required to come back again and again, and whatever we practice, wherever we direct our energy, where we pay attention, we strengthen.
That question speaks to us now too: What is it that we wish to dominate our lives, our minds, and our hearts?
Research tells us that whatever we keep replaying over and over—whether it is a reactive pattern of anxiety, blame, shame, feeling "not good enough" and small, or the heart-mind of gentle kindness—that is what gets wired together. "Neurons that fire together, wire together"; we are strengthening the neural pathways, inclining us to do it again.
Then the deeper, maybe more sobering question here in my heart, that calls to me like a loon's haunting cry over a still lake: where am I consciously or unconsciously directing my energy? And what feels expansive in my body is this—what if... what ifthe path I choose to walk again and again: was the path of "pause," the path of the spacious holy betweens.
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."— Viktor Frankl
🌸 Three Lovely Shares | Poems. A Great Loss & A Film to Watch.
Yes, it’s true! 100,000 poems bombed Barcelona!
On June 20, 2026, the skies above Barcelona filled not with fear, but with poetry. A helicopter dropped 100,000 poetry-printed bookmarks over the Barcelona Cathedral.
The project—officially called "Bombing of Poems" (Bombardeo de Poemas)—was created by Casagrande, a Chilean art collective. 👉 Click Here
Beloved teacher, scholar, and author, Robert Thurman died last Tuesday. He was 84.
Many of you reading here know of this loss. Many teachers have posted—and continue to post—tributes to this great man, a trailblazer who impacted our world with spiritual wisdom and knowledge. I know he impacted mine, and I am most grateful.
“One of the great discoveries of the wisdom traditions is that reality is not against us. The universe is not a place of punishment, fear, or isolation. At its deepest level, it is a field of freedom, creativity, and infinite possibility.” – Bob Thurman
The book of his that deeply impacted my life—now heavily underlined and noted in the margins—is The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between. 👉 Click Here
Crows Are White, a documentary by Ahsen Nadeem. Rating: 100% on the Tomatometer.
I am sharing this tender, beautiful film I just heard about. It has been reviewed as incredibly real and full of grace for the ways we all try—and sometimes fail—to honor where we come from while honoring who we love, and the courage it takes to speak our truth.
🎬 Watch Crows Are White | Official Trailer - In Theaters July 2026
Film Synopsis: For over a thousand years, a secretive Buddhist sect has lived in an isolated monastery in Japan, performing acts of extreme physical endurance in their pursuit of enlightenment… 👉Continue reading here
🌸 Closing Songs | A Song to Play on Repeat!
“Hands down, one of the most beautiful songs ever.”
“This..song.. it's in my all time top five.”
“Words can't describe the beauty of this song…”
“if i could choose a soundtrack for my dreams at night this would be the one!”
This song came my way, and I'm so happy it did! Something Beautiful by Alexi Murdoch (5:18 min)
Lyrics: ✨
And I thought that I saw, a light Shine, I thought that I saw a light shine
Yes, I thought, that I saw, a light Shine; I think I see a light shine, 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 happy
May you be peaceful.
May you be free from suffering in all forms–
physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, financial, all the many forms here in this realm.
— 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/
