11.24.2025. Butter-Soft
Hello dear Friends,
“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.”
— Rumi
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The question here, steeping like afternoon tea warming my chilled hands, heart, and toes in the shortening of daylight—the season of ponder, of winter, inching closer to my bones—is: What have I become an expert at over the last sixty-four years or so?
Research tells us it is the duration, intensity, and consistency of physical exercise that triggers growth and healing in the body. That turns on the cytokines that control repair in the body—the chemicals that control growth or decay in every tissue and cell. Growth and healing get triggered with exercise.
I cannot help but wonder about our emotional, spiritual-energetic, heart body: What have we been exercising? Meeting with focused intensity and consistent care? (Care meaning the direction of our energy and attention.) As Neuropsychologist Donald Hebb said: “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”
Here is the gorgeous, and not so easy to swallow, truth: we are always practicing something, as my meditation teacher would say. Whatever we practice every day, whatever we consistently pay attention to, we become very good at; we become an expert at. This teaching is one to take to heart—one to take a quiet, kind look at, to sit with a gentle and friendly (metta) heart and ask the tender question: What have I been practicing?
Perhaps you, like me, may have unknowingly, over the longevity of time and with left-hemisphere laser focus, become an expert at hard worry, complaining, criticizing, sharp anger, or tight-fisted fear.
And here is the most lovely part of this holy truth, too: as long as there is breath in our bodies and a heart longing to wake up, we still have greatness of time. We can become experts at wonderment and awe; kindness and care; graciousness and embodied, butter-soft broken, full-hearted joy.
Practice and consistent (not perfect) effort are required, along with a kind, willing, tender, brave heart. And we cannot go it alone—we need each other, and we need our teachers. When we are touched by the warmth and care of another, by our own hand on our heart, by metta, by gentle, by kind, by soft—we open.
There, in the light and the dark, in the in-between, is the holy, waiting for us in the wilderness of beauty and belonging.
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This Thursday, amidst the festive pots and pans, the teaspoons buried beneath recipe books and pie tins, may your Thanksgiving (a day rich with holy messes) be filled with small, tender moments of gratitude, for at the end what else is there?
Happy Thanksgiving
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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: 20 min “Holding Yourself with Tenderness” Self-Compassion Practice & 25-minute Metta Meditation Practice
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM: Conversations on the Practice of Meditation
Dāna: Pay What You Can
* Meeting at Metta Meditation’s New Home: 778 West Frontage Road, Suite 111, Northfield, IL.
Closing with gratitude,
Love, Wini
PS. More goodness below, made with ♥️
💌 Perhaps you know someone in need of a dollop of tenderness, share this letter: Please forward on.
☕ Support My Work: Your donation helps fuel the time, research, and energy to write and send this letter every week: Buy Me a Coffee
🌸 Two Poems
LATE PRAYER | Jane Hirshfield
Tenderness does not choose its own uses.
It goes out to everything equally,
circling rabbit and hawk.
Look: in the iron bucket,
a single nail, a single ruby—
all the heavens and hells.
They rattle in the heart and make one sound.
“For Blessing” | Marilynne Robinson
The sun had come up brilliantly
after a heavy rain, and the trees
were glistening and very wet.
On some impulse,
plain exuberance, I suppose,
the fellow jumped up
and caught hold of a branch,
and a storm of luminous water
came pouring down on the two of them,
and they laughed and took off running,
the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress
as if she were a little bit disgusted,
but she wasn’t.
It was a beautiful thing to see,
like something from a myth.
I don’t know why I thought of that now,
except perhaps because it is easy
to believe in such moments
that water was made primarily
for blessing, and only secondarily
for growing vegetables
or doing the wash.
I wish I had paid more attention to it.
My list of regrets may seem unusual,
but who can know that they are, really.
This is an interesting planet.
It deserves all the attention
you can give it.
🍃 This poem sliced me—the simplest of regrets, the blessing of water, the miraculous of the everyday that deserves all our attention.
A blog to know about: This came my way via SALT Project. It always offers something that touches the heart—little, tender offerings of finding beauty in the unexpectedness of life.
🌸 Three Quotes | Dalai Lama. Ram Dass. Ann W. Young.
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” — Dalai Lama
“We must take enough time to remember our losses – be they friends or loved ones passed away, the death of long-held hopes or dreams, the loss of homes, careers, or countries, or health we may never get back again. Rather than close ourselves to grief, it helps to realize that we only grieve for what we love.” – Ram Dass
“Silence enables us to see the sacredness of all life…”to see life steady and to see it whole.” In an age that has lost all sense of the sacred, of awe and wonder at the Divine penetration throughout the physical, human plane, how much we need the recovery of silence. Without some sense of awe, there is little basis for meaning.” — Ann W. Young, THE MYSTERY OF SILENCE
🌸 A Must Watch | 📽️ Documentary Come See Me in the Good Light
"When your heart is broken you plant seeds in the cracks and pray for rain."
– Andrea Gibson
Oh, I have been waiting for this to be released—maybe you too? The documentary is Come See Me in the Good Light, about poet Andrea Gibson and their beloved partner Meg Falley.
Andrea Gibson is one of the most beloved spoken word poets; they are one of my go-to for finding beauty in loss, for finding hope when there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.
The trailer alone will bring tears, memory, and hope. Happiness will feed your heart with joy and sorrow, love and loss, pleasure and pain, holding all of it like two baby birds in each upturned palm of our hands—the what is of life.
If you're new to Andrea's writings, click here. I urge you to watch every YouTube video you can find—it will be a heart-charge!
“I know most people try hard
to do good and find out too late
they should have tried softer.”
– Andrea Gibson
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🌸 Snippets to Share | Some Lovely Offerings To Know About:
💡Something Gorgeous To Know About: The Book of Thanks–A Catalogue of Gratitudes by Rachel Hébert.
🎬 Something to Watch: Aboriginal activist, educator and artist Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr Baumann film Dadirri’, the practise of Deep Inner Listening and quiet still awareness
🫂 Something to Be Part Of: Chants & Prayers (Taizé) with Simon de Voil, a weekly online offering on Wednesdays at 12 pm EST. Simon is one of the most lovely human beings: a singer, songwriter, interfaith spiritual minister, and boat builder. This weekly offering is pure goodness for your heart. Simon uses song, chant, visual prayer, and silence to explore themes of healing, connection with the earth, community, and sacred wisdom.
📚 Something to Read: The idea is that "The sunflower opens in the presence of the sun (it’s genetically programmed to do this)... so is the human heart." Lovely Tom from the Metta Community shared this article, "Spinning the Heart" by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. He also shared his go-to book at 91 years old: Sufism, the Transformation of the Heart (that is a recommendation worth paying attention to).
🧘♀️ Something on Creativity & Meditation: Dharma Lab Episode 13: The Neuroscience of Being - Turning Anxiety into Insight with Dr. Cortland Dahl, and Dr. Richard Davidson. “True creativity arises not from trying harder, but from relaxing the constraints of thought. As Richie notes, “When we stop directing our thoughts, the mind becomes more flexible — and novel insights can emerge.”
🌸🎶 Closing Song | A Deep Bow of GRATITUDE by MaMuse
A sweet video of giving thanks. The kindness that met us, bloomed us.
The beat of gratitude that we have in our hearts—gratitude for all those who have helped us get where we are today. So much gratitude for our families, loved ones, ancestors, teachers, and sacred best friends, and even the bumps along life’s way; our deepest gratitude for giving us strong heart bones.
A full heart for the kindness that made each of us who we are. A deep bow.(1:43 min)
🌸🙏 Dedicate Merit | In all Mystical traditions, there is a closing prayer – prayers of blessing, gratitude and protection.
Today’s blessings are from John O'Donohue’s gorgeous book, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings. It is a book worth owning, keeping on the stack on your bedside table.
“May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.
May your gravity be lightened by grace.
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.”
Have a blessed day,
Love, Wini 💖
🌸 ✨ 🙏 Offer Support
If you appreciate receiving these free weekly offerings grounded in poems, quotes, songs and heart goodness please consider offering support through Buy Me a Coffee, 🌸 venmo (Winifred-Nimrod) 🌸 or zelle (wininim@gmail.com) 🌸
Thank you, I am a one-woman, one-finger at time show.
Send on, add more light into our tender complex world.
✨ 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/
