home as a monastery

Our next door neighbor just left town. He is on his way back to a monastery that he stayed at for a month last year. This time he is going for six. He is not Catholic. Something is calling him back. We like him and miss him already. He feels good to be around. One evening this summer, while picking weeds from the beet patch in his front yard and sprawling ourselves on the sidewalk with the yellow sunlight glowing behind him, he told me about his experience there. An awakening, to be sure.

I keep thinking about him. About six months in a monastery. About silence and the profound work it does to shake us out and strip us down to something simple and real and shimmery.

When I was eight months pregnant with Elliott, I went to a Vipassana retreat. I signed the papers promising to remain there, in silence, for the ten day duration. I left after two. Sitting for that many hours with that enormous belly hurt so much. Yet...I am always wondering...what if I had stayed?

I tell myself regularly that my work is right here, that my yoga, my meditation, my practice is spreading the peanut butter, wiping the snot, holding each small body, breathing in the scent of his head and her breath, and being with just that.

Still, there is more I can do. Or not do, more accurately. More silence and presence. Much more. That is what is rising to the surface for me right now since going on retreat isn't going to happen. Deliberately seeing more of my life as a practice. Bringing the monastery home. This blog is one such place.

For the next while, then, I will keep the silence here, posting only pictures.

I wish you love.