integrate

We sat with our eyes closed in a circle on the floor and we breathed and what came to me over and over was that this was not just a writing practice it was a compassion practice.

Every week for a year and a half

I go to my practice and we shed the day and the to-do's and the busyness

and we close our eyes and breathe and clear our minds

and then we write.

And then we share,

reflections casting light in all our shadows.

Listening without judging, receiving gifts through words, bearing witness and studying the movement of others' minds. We all strip raw, exposing soft undersides unguarded and in doing so, spines lengthen and weights lift and fog clears and from scattered stars constellations appear.

We all have stories.

Every person has a story.

The surface hides the buried, the unearthed.

This is a compassion practice.

I am practicing compassion.

Learning the minds of strangers and friends through their stories.

Everyone has a story.

How can I carry this with me --

from this pulsing room in a shared space where permission to live unedited cushions our step and bolsters our back --

out the door and into the bite of the wind and the glare of the sun?

I have been holding a lot of anger. More anger in five weeks than in my whole life long. My shoulders are tight and my mind is a carnival ride, flinging me forward and jerking to a halt, shooting me sideways and lurching me backwards and making me sick.

I've shed it, at least for these precious two hours.

How can I carry this with me?

Everyone has a story. If we could share our stories, if we could listen without judgment to each other's stories (not rhetoric), if we could carve a space for vulnerability and watch strangers and friends discover constellations from scattered stars,

if we could show compassion....

We open with mediation, and we close with meditation.

To integrate what we've written and heard and shared

So we can walk out from here and let compassion

sing out from our cells.