3.17.2025. One Letter at a Time
Hello dear Friends,
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”
– Emily Dickinson
🌿
No in-person Metta Meditation Practice Today
(I am out of town)
See you next Monday, March 24
It is a small offering this week. Two poems. Three quotes. Two events: one event my dear friend Julie is hosting. One virtual event (both good to know about). Two songs sent to me by my friend Lanie (my meditation teacher always said in her next life, if you believe in such a thing, she would pray to be reborn as a musician, a rocker, a bard, for music is a transmission, dharma for the soul) and I am here typing one letter by one letter at a time with my left hand, with my left index finger, and that is a story for another time.
So grateful we are here together,
Love,
Wini
🌸 Below are offerings to warm your heart, wrap you in tender care. Tenderness rooted in ‘to stretch’ seems to be in need more than ever today. Click on the highlighted links to let your heart wander and stretch. xo ♥️
🌸 Two Poems to Share
You Darkness | Robert Bly Rilke Poem
You darkness, that I come from,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes
a circle of light for everyone,
and then no one outside learns of you.
But the darkness pulls in everything:
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! —
powers and people —
and it is possible a great energy
is moving near me.
I have faith in nights.
Invitation to Love | Paul Laurence Dunbar
Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or come when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene’er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.
You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it to rest
As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.
Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd’ning cherry.
Come when the year’s first blossom blows,
Come when the summer gleams and glows,
Come with the winter’s drifting snows,
And you are welcome, welcome.
🌸 Three Quotes | Betty Smith. John Hay. Christine Valters Paintner
“Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first time or last time. Then your time on Earth will be filled with joy.” — Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
“So I go down to the water's edge again, to listen for my neglected ancestors, whose voices sound in the trees and carry across the shore with the mewing of the gulls. There is a great, innovative music out there which we are sadly neglecting. The inner earth is a song I have only started to listen to.” — John Hay in A Beginner's Faith in Things Unseen
“The word radical comes from the Latin word radix meaning ‘root.’ Radical hospitality might be seen as hospitality that proceeds from the very core or root of who we are, an invitation to extend a welcome to the stranger that dwells inside of you.” —Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, A Midwinter God: Encountering the Divine in Seasons of Darkness
🌿 Abbey of the Arts is a virtual monastery founded by Christine Valters Paintner, is a place find I turn again and again to as a place of refuge. A place for me to root in contemplative practices of the desert, Celtic, and Benedictine lineages. A place to slow down, listen and wonder. A place I turn to to tend, to stretch my heart.
🌸 A Virtual Event to Know About | TUESDAYS WITH MERTON
This special Tuesdays With Merton event takes place at Bellarmine University in Louisville. It will be live-streamed, and you still have time to sign up for it
March 18 at 7:00 pm, for "Being a Healing Presence in a Wounded and Traumatized World, our 2025 Fourth and Walnut Lecture, with James Finley, Ph.D
Finley lived as a monk at the cloistered Trappist monastery of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, where Thomas Merton, was his spiritual director.
He is the author of: The Healing Path: A Memoir and an Invitation, Merton's Palace of Nowhere, The Contemplative Heart and Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God.
You can register for the livestream here
'You can choose to savour silence, to open yourself to it, so as to enter more deeply into its hidden depths…”
— James Finley
🌸 An In-Person Event To Know About | Shredding the Silence on Menopause
Julie Fedeli and Pamela DeRose - founders of Midlife Upgrade are hosting a special screening event for film The (M) Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause.
Experience the film that's breaking the silence on menopause and sparking a movement for change.
The event will also feature an exclusive panel discussion with renowned menopause leaders including Tamsen Fadal, Dr. Sharon Malone, Dr. Somi Javaid, Dr. Suzanne Gilberg, Dr. Sameena Rahman, & Dr. Jila Senemar—LIVE and IN PERSON ready to connect —plus book signings!
Where: The Arts Club of Chicago
When: Tuesday evening April 8th.
Tickets are limited
🌿
🌸 Two Closing Songs | Roots & In My Soul
Roots by Emeli Sandé and In My Soul by Flannel Graph
🌿
“May you stretch in ways never imagined
May tender lead your way
May you know your beauty, even so.”
Have a blessed day,
Love,
Wini
🌸 I’m grateful you’re a part of this community.
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🌎 may we stitch more heart-tenderness into the fabric of our planet.
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….Until next week. 💖 ✨
