09.22.2025 Bare Bones of Autumn
Hello dear Friends,
“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself”
― Henry Miller
🍃
I am having such delight recording and posting a poem a day, a ten-day countdown of poems whispering and falling like autumn’s yellow, burnt-red, and orange leaves onto Instagram! In this time so ripe with light and dark, maybe poems are a portal to the ineffable, the indescribable.
If you're not on Instagram, or if you're on Instagram but don't visit often, it's worth taking a peek. How beautiful it is to hear each voice speak—each a different bloom, each with its own exquisite scent, each reading one of Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer's poems—a carpet of poems ushering in her in-person visit here this upcoming Saturday.
If you haven't purchased your ticket yet, please give yourself this gorgeous, much-needed heart refuge, Click here.
Another ushering in: Today, I am acutely aware of the arrival of the fall equinox with its fierce invitation to welcome the season of the downward descent, the fall into quiet, into rest.
The stark, bare-bones dharma teaching of autumn, which at times we all resist, is that everything changes. We, too, like the trees, must let go—drop our leaves, the things that no longer serve us—and risk standing naked, exposed on barren brown ground. Somewhere inside of us, we know this is not optional.
Perhaps this is what makes autumn so exquisite. How could we not fall down onto our knees in gratitude for this essential autumnal transmission, given to us just by stepping outside our front doors, where all our senses come alive with the breath of 'autumn' as a verb. In this time of decay, our bodies and hearts pulse with the grace of learning how to say yes, yes, yes to surrender, to let go, to change and compost. We learn to exhale into the Unknown.
Come Join Me Today *
We will begin our time with Calm-Abiding (silent) Meditation, Practicing with Difficulties, followed by a Metta Meditation Practice
Drop-in Meditation Monday
All are welcome; no prior experience is needed—just bring an open heart.
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM: Guided & Metta Meditation Practice
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Conversations on the Practice of Meditation
* New Temporary Location: 778 West Frontage Road, Suite 114, Northfield, IL
Donations are gratefully accepted.
Closing here, my heart beating in gratitude, and do-not-miss the closing love song–on the deepest level to the self. 🙏
Love, Wini
Scroll below: Holy goodness. Made with ♥️.
💌 Know someone who needs a little goodness for their heart? Please share! If this was forwarded to you, subscribe for your own copy
🌸 Two Poems
I speak with gravity | Jane Hirshfield
To your left, the word gravid:
the weight of new life.
To your right, the word grave:
place for putting a body
once it’s become only weight.
Between them:
existence,
ambush of amazement,
You.
Listen to the full poem read by Jane Hirshfield
Her voice, her heart (1:43 min)
Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Is Not Breaking | Rosemary Wahtola Trommer
On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star
would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons
equals the collective weight of every animal
on earth. Including the insects. Times three.
Six billion tons sounds impossible
until I consider how it is to swallow grief—
just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed
a neutron star. How dense it is,
how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.
How difficult it is to move then.
How impossible to believe that anything
could lift that weight.
There are many reasons to treat each other
with great tenderness. One is
the sheer miracle that we are here together
on a planet surrounded by dying stars.
One is that we cannot see what
anyone else has swallowed.
🍃Watch video here (1:52 min) “We cannot see what anyone else has swallowed.”
How do we seem to forget this dharma of remembering —we all carry joys and sorrows, body aches and birthdays, we all carry invisible scars.
May we remember our roots of human where love and kindness prevail.
🌸 Three Quotes | Jessica Grindstaff. Unknown. John Tarrant.
"The small things you do actually do make a difference. Billions of people doing small things adds up to a big difference. We all have to figure out how to step out of this totally overwhelmed PTSD state that we’re in politically and environmentally and wake up and do some small thing. Now. And every day, until you go to sleep.” — Jessica Grindstaff
“You are the whole world, my friend. You are all your senses drink in, with such lusciousness. For God’s sake (for your own dear sake!) slow down and notice it all. Revel in it. You don’t have forever to do so.” — Unknown (Do you know?)
🍃A true confession: Throughout the week, I gather quotes, poems, and things I read/speak wow my heart like cut flowers clipped from my garden. I place them in a Google Keep folder like a vase to be held, arranged and smelled. This one was such a beauty-find, but when I copied and pasted it, I did not include its author. (Oh, I am sorry to miss honoring its source) I still wanted to include here– because of its truth, its heart that says kindly, with a fierceness, “...we don't have forever, my friend.”
“Each age has its own tasks. For most of us now, our monasteries have no walls except the silence our meditation gathers to the center of our lives, and this is enough—it is more than enough. Our hermitage is the act of living with attention in the midst of things; amid the rhythms of work and love, the bath with the child, the endlessly growing paperwork, the ever-present likelihood of war, the necessity for taking action to help the world. .” —John Tarrant, The Light Inside the Dark: Zen, Soul, and the Spiritual Life
🌸 Countdown 5 Days! | Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer in Chicago!
Did you hear Richard Rohr speak on his podcast about why he chose Rosemerry’s poem “For When People Ask” to open his latest book, The Tears of Things? Listen here
“When I read that I just said, “Holy Spirit, thank you. You gave me that poem.” It’s a gorgeous entranceway into what we call non-dual thinking. And the subtlety that we’re going to need to understand this book both and thinking we’ve often called it. And this wonderful woman poet names it. There are words that are saying both.”
– Richard Rohr
It is not too late to join us this Saturday for the "All of It"—The Beauty and The Sorrow— the wondrous Poet, storyteller, and teacher Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer will be spending the day with us!
✍️ Here are the details:
When: Saturday, September 27, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (Lunch is included)
Where: Valley Lo Club, Glenview, IL
Tickets: Three price options are available.Buy your ticket here. (no one turned away due to cost, if your heart is a yes, please reach out to me directly, click here.)
🌸 Give a Listen & Read | David Foster Wallace Interview
Sometimes something comes your way that speaks right to the heart, creating a sense of spaciousness. This offering is one of those things.
Give a listen to a short, poignant clip (2:29 min) from one of David Foster Wallace’s most famous interviews with the German TV channel ZDF. Recorded in 2003, it's a message that still rings true today.
Wallace speaks to the need for quiet, the feeling of dread, and the nature of being alone. He talks about our desire for self-gratification and our hunger for silence.
“There's an almost dread that comes up, here, about having to be alone and having to be quiet.
…but it seems significant that we don't want things to be quiet ever anymore.
There's this other part of you, and it's the same part that is almost hungry for silence and quiet ...
but I think it's true that here in the U.S., every year, the culture gets more and more hostile—I don't mean hostile like angry, just—and it becomes more and more difficult to ask people to read or to look at a piece of art for an hour or to listen to a piece of music that's complicated and that takes work to understand.
Because, well, there are a lot of reasons, but particularly now in computer and internet culture, everything is so fast, and... and the faster things go, the more we feed that part of ourselves, but don't feed the part of ourselves that likes quiet, that can live in quiet, you know, that can live without any kind of stimulus."
Watch the unedited interview here (1:23:47 min)
🌸 Closing Song 🎶 | Joe Cocker - You Are So Beautiful
A true love song. Joe Cocker's raspy, tender voice, on the verge of tears, sings, "You are so beautiful to me..."
And what if this song—this love poem—was the truest, holiest offering to your own gorgeous self before you die (whenever that day may come, may it be years from now).
And what if we could each sing this song into our cells, into our bodies, with our left hand over our heart, right hand on top—and sing with the same heart-wrenching voice, in full presence and gratitude, "You are so beautiful to me / Can't you see / You're everything I hoped for / You're everything I need / You are so beautiful to me/such joy and happiness you bring….
What a sacred offering that would be. I think we would each burst into tears.
You are so beautiful
To me
You are so beautiful
To me
Can't you see
You're everything I hoped for
You're everything I need
You are so beautiful to me
To me
🎶 Listen on YouTube Here or Spotify Here (2:39 min)
🍃
🌸 In all Mystical traditions, there is a closing prayer – prayers of blessing, gratitude and protection.
May you open to autumn as a verb,
the wisdom of falling to open you.
May Beauty and kindness guide your heart,
your speech and actions.
May you be safe and protected.
Have a blessed day,
Love, Wini 💖
🌸 Share the Light!
If this Metta Newsletter resonates with you, you have the power to amplify its reach.
Help spread this tender offer of kindness and care out into the world
Share the Metta Letters with a friend.
Help increase more beauty-glow, small donations go along way and help me to continue the Metta Newsletter bloom 🌸 click here Venmo
✨ may we bloom more Light.
💞 may we grow more Goodness for the healing of all.
🌎 may each of us stitch more heart-tenderness 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/
