10.13.2025. Thrumming with All of It
Hello dear Friends,
“When you write the story of your life,
Don’t let anyone else hold the pen.”
– Attrib. Harley Davidson
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Autumn. I feel her yielding in my bones as trees begin to lay bare their naked bones, hiding nothing. I wonder if you, too, feel this ache and mourning in the axes of your bones? This exit of time, which perhaps is easier to receive if we call it falling leaves.
The ache comes from the disturbance of color—greens turning burnt orange, sugar maple yellow, fire engine red, a painter’s palette of yellow ochre mixed with raw sienna. On these radiant fall days, colors and leaves flying, my body thrums with the awe and wonder of it all.
And, my body mourns “gone”—our gardens in fade; our flowers unfolding done. The sun is low; gone are long days. The air is thinning; cold is settling into our lungs. Dead leaves become a brown carpet, preparing us for the long, dark, holy season of sabbath—winter.
Perhaps this is the most abundant and grateful harvest question of them all: When you wrote the story of your life this year, did you hold the pen?
The teachings of awakening say ‘circumstances’ (or what I call the Holy) is always conspiring to wake us up, to communicate with us, and is always playing out in our lives, seen and unseen, inspiring, creating through us—through our hands, through our favorite pens. It is never the end of our story; there is always time to have greatness of heart.
Come Join Me Today *
Drop-in Meditation Monday
All are welcome; no prior experience is needed—just bring an open heart.
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM: 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 with heart beats of gratitude,
Love, Wini
Scroll below: Holy goodness between. 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
Haiku | Mizuta Masahide, Japanese samurai poet
barn's burnt down
now I can see
the moon
Compline | Kathleen Hirsch
Each day, there is one thing to be done
And one only
Remember that you love
Remember that time, this day
Like the ones that came before
And the ones to come after
Exist only in time
And that we break a sacred law
When we allow the clutter
To suffocate the self that exceeds time.
This morning it was the tile man
Bringing news of discontinued stock.
Yesterday, the busted basement door.
There are as many ways to keep you
From the holy as there
Are grappling hooks in the ivy.
There is only one way.
Close your eyes
Reach for nothing
Until you can do
As the voice of your dreams
On the membrane of day
Commands you to do:
Make all things sacred.
🌸 Three Quotes | May Sarton. Jaime Gil de Biedma. Gerry Shishin Wick.
“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” –May Sarton
“I believed I wanted to be a poet but deep down I just wanted to be a poem.” – Jaime Gil de Biedma.
🍃This quote was sent my way from a dear friend who came across it while reading Francis Weller's new book, In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty.
Then he added a deep share from a conversation with his Sufi teacher, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. My friend said to Llewellyn, “I want to know love,” and Llewellyn replied, “No, you want to be love.”
“I once received advice from an old Buddhist teacher to see everyone as the Buddha. What would it be like if, when you went to the grocery store, you saw everyone as the Buddha? That includes all the shoppers, all the employees stocking the shelves, the cashiers, the pharmacist, the butchers, the bakers, and the candlestick makers. How about when you are driving your car? Can you see all the other drivers as the Buddha? What about your partner, your boss, or your coworkers? Everywhere you look there is Buddha, both inside and outside. Hakuin said, “This very body is the body of Buddha.” —Gerry Shishin Wick
🍃 This quote struck my heart as a share here. My meditation teacher, Dona, too would invite in another energy, like the Buddha or the Christ (whomever in your lineage is the embodiment of awakened energy of heart and wisdom).
Whenever the heart, mind, and body were getting tight-fisted, stuck in fight and fright, or jammed in difficult emotions to navigate, she would invite this phrase in to say and to repeat in your heart as a mantra: “The Buddha experiencing [fill in the blank ex: road rage, roly-poly sad, shame, anxious… ]”
And something magical would happen: breath and space would begin to open. Once there is some space, there is choice—the choice to decide how best to befriend your heart and the worlds we each inhabit. A choice to remember our true nature—the awakened qualities that reside within each of us.🍃
🌸 Something to Watch 📺 | Any Conversations You Can Find With Iain McGilchrist
“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel
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"You become what you give your attention to"--- I've lived by this quote and see the power of where I place my attention which has led my life and led me to the work of the British psychiatrist and philosopher, Iain McGilchrist. He explores how the two halves of our brain—the left and right hemispheres—have completely different modes of attention.
It's not that the hemispheres do different jobs, but that they do things differently. McGilchrist states that our culture is currently neglecting the crucial, expansive view of the right hemisphere, which is where our natural disposition towards wisdom, sacredness, empathy, awe and the ineffable is rooted.
This caught my attention, so worthy of investigation! How did we become a society that tends toward left-hemisphere dominant thinking?
A great listen, worthy of your time and important for the times we are living in:
Why Contemplation & Wonder Are Essential for the Future of Humanity with Iain McGilchrist (1:59:15)
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🌸 Closing Song 🎶 | Yo-Yo travels around the country to make music and meet people who have deep connections to the earth.
Our Common Nature, a new podcast with Yo-Yo Ma and Ana González
🎶 Listen to Acadia: Yo-Yo Ma and the Wabanaki Play for the Dawn (34:08 min)
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🌸 In all Mystical traditions, there is a closing prayer – prayers of blessing, gratitude and protection.
May you write the story of your life,
hold tight to your pen.”
May awe and wonder—
guide your day, your heart, where you pay attention.
May you be sheltered, safe, and protected.
Have a blessed day,
Love, Wini 💖
🌸 Share the Light!
If this Metta Newsletter gave your heart a jolt of goodness, a beauty boost, please
help spread this tender kindness and care out into the world. Share the Metta Letters with a friend.
Oh, It is a hard ask– Small donations help me to continue this loving offering, Metta Newsletter bloom (I am a one-woman show) 🌸 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/
