They sang it over and over, thousands and thousands of leaves falling.

How we choose to show up in this world shapes the person we become.

Some have no interest in pursuing freedom. They don’t even realise they’re under an enchantment.

If we are not able to turn towards our deep wounding and fully feel the pain of that wounding, then we will never be able to fully and unconditionally meet others in their wounding.

We love being on retreat together. The rituals swelling with heart, spontaneous dance, guttural mantras, fierce prostrations. The stillness afterwards. Walking slowly back to our tents together, saying good-night with the eyes.

It’s scary, edging into the unknownness of that space where who we thought we were is so clearly insubstantial but what we truly are has yet to fully emerge.

I go to bed with the courage of my convictions even though they scare me sometimes.

Confusion might just be the launch pad from which the rest of my life might lift off, if only I’m courageous enough to sit in the discomfort of my utter confusion.

The breath is life. To say I can’t breathe is to say I can’t live.

There is a difference between intent and impact, and as a Buddhist I know it’s not good enough to just focus on intent. The context in which we think, speak and act matters.

All this I carry with me as I climb to that sacred spot.

So today I hear the call of the cuckoo and I think, my work is now and my work is here.

This is the beginning of the work of feeling into the discomfort of now. Admitting that we, others and the world are not as we’d like them to be. Holding the tension of that admission.

I wish I had said I love you.

My anger is the barometer revealing the wrongness of things and a compass pointing me in the direction of righteousness.

And in that song I heard sorrow and devotion and humility and grace. And in that song I let myself hear the whisper of my own humanity asking me what now, what now.

We need to learn to trust those impulses and we learn to trust them by going with them.

As I stare up into the deep blue sky I allow my mind to wander.

America burning its way through lockdown during a global pandemic because enough is enough and we can’t take it anymore and Black lives matter.

After the fire, when the whole earth is scorched and it looks like the end of the world, only then might something completely new, and possibly better, emerge.