November 27, 2014:
A day for thanks
On this Thanksgiving Day, 2014 under a soft, November sky, I’m thinking of our little band of laywomen and laymen who walk together a pathless path of freedom. This morning, it seems that the very path we walk is, in some way, made up of all the invisible filaments of connection among us; our words, our actions, our thoughts, our breaths and heartbeats and all the other invisible gestures of being that are love, when we know it and when we don’t. The words, actions, thoughts and being of countless ones who walked before us, and the ones who will walk after, who ask us to please keep going.
It takes courage, patience, deep doubt and a willingness to trust your heart’s own confidence in the unknown—and most of all, a willingness to allow the profound vulnerability of love. You don’t always know you are walking. Often, you know you are falling, stumbling, crashing into things, banged up and wailing—-and yet you walk, we walk together. For this I am so very thankful.
To those of you we don’t hear from often, thank you for being there: for your practices of meditation, your study, your actions of kindness in the world, and your support of this sangha, both direct and indirect.
To those who give so much of your time, your patience, and your resources to the sangha, who support my own ability to teach and the ever-widening circle of teaching and learning that makes us strong—my deep, deep gratitude.
It always seems that we are just now ready to begin. And so be it! Let us begin, and begin, and begin together, and may the flourishing of our practice be the flourishing of lives all around, be the thanks we offer for this untellable beauty of being.
With love,
Sarah