Inertia set in after my last post, I almost forgot that I have a blog or website at all.   A new friend who checked out my online presence said my most recent remark here and it was that I haven’t been able to write anything since the Orange Haired Villain was elected.  That was more than a year ago.  It is not true that I’ve been paralyzed, but I became less public as one of three coordinators to lead the Spirit Rock Teacher Training.  It feels like we are turning a wheel that will turn other wheels, which is very gratifying, and this also requires a certain amount of force.  Thus in order to focus, I have been turning down nearly all public meditation teaching invitations through 2018 in order to focus more on helping the wonderful 20 people in the Spirit Rock training program to become the best next generation of retreat teachers and Dharma leaders they can be.   They’re amazingly diverse, I’m enjoying and learning so much from them, particularly as the only white, straight human in the room.   Concomitantly I’m doing more meditation practice and finishing my book.  Changing the pattern of my life has occasionally felt sad or scary, turning down chances to work with teacher friends and see retreatants I care about.  But I need to trust why I framed out a period of intense, somewhat more private creativity.

Yesterday I was talking about this with my friend Gina Sharpe, who’s been laid up with a badly broken ankle and ‘stranded’ in San Francisco for several weeks.  She’s discovering, she said, resting and receiving the love and care of friends and family.  Gina quoted a wise, flawed, old Western monk who said:  “Be an earthworm.”  I liked that.  David, my husband once surprised me by letting me know that the giant Amazon earthworm is one of the most sacred beings for Yekuana people.  I remember saving a worm who was drowning in a puddle of water on a sidewalk, near Harvard University’s biolabs.  I sensed its relief when it found itself on dry land and could breathe again.  Secret aerators, benefactors. It’s hard to find a beautiful image of an earthworm, I suppose they thrive on not having one.

Here are a few images of earthworms from National Geographic.  Above a lovely drawing, below the quantum dots generated in earthworms as they comfortably digested cadmium telluride, generating the luminous dots that discern cancer, etc.  And a link to the National Geo article at bottom where I found the images and the interesting discovery.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2012/12/24/the-quantum-earthworm/