Your courage in traversing this paradox of harm and healing is no small thing. I'm grateful the river is your companion. Life source, life force. We're holding you in our prayers every day.

Oh Michael you are forgiven for that act of violent self protection from your childhood. You are a kind and gentle man deserving of peace and being surrounded by love, as you are.

Hi Michael,
I love that you have gotten so much from sitting by the river and observing, experiencing, and engaging with nature, including spiders and dragonflies, and trees. You are likely serving the elemental beings of the plants and trees, as well as the group souls of the animals, by your presence and by your appreciation.

I'm sad that we are not playing basketball together these days. We were just getting started when this new experience of cancer came along. My knees are acting up and will need replacement at some point anyway, so it's probably good you aren't challenging me to compete. Many of your friends may not realize that you are quite a competitor and an excellent athlete.

I've been reading and enjoying John Michael Greer's Mystery Teaching from the Living Earth: An Introduction to Spiritual Ecology. You'd appreciate it as it synthesizes beautifully this strange dance of life we are all experiencing in such varied ways.

All my love. Albert

Hope you feel more healing than harm.

I realize it's just a typo, but I love the idea of you having rumors on both sides of your brain. It speaks to your current uncertainty.

Hi Michael...While I have not communicated in awhile, I am so grateful for the spiritual direction I receive through your contemplative sharings...thanks for being mentor to so many of us.....I sure wish you and Mary Margaret could have a visit...She is another one of my conemplative/mystic mentors/ To me mystics are real people with real feelings. Hanging out with her is sheer GIFT! She is even good swearing once in awhile!!!! Love you ....Mary Frances

Dear Michael,
C(ontinuing)c(are): Jenny,
I feel kin with you, living with waves of fear, centered by my contact with rivers and their river bottoms.
(Yesterday, for me, it was the Minnesota River, including a beaver smacking ki's tail to threaten me.)
I feel kin with you in balancing harm and benefit.
"Life is suffering." --Buddhism
"We eat one another" --Gary Snyder
It's a big holy mess.
Richard

Michael,

As always, thank you! Your words about your “urge to react without thinking, full of fear” followed by your gratitude for your spot at the river resonates deeply within me. I have phrase “finding freedom to love in the pause” that I think is similar to your “little buffer to lessen some of that harm.” When I think of the creatures (both human and other species )that I harmed I have realized that much of what I thought of as spontaneity (“my freedom,” sic) was thoughtless and needless reactions letting my emotions — fear, anger, lust, etc. — control me. One of my spiritual advisors shared Wordsworth’s wonderful line with me; “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” You, my friend, are such a poet!

Love and prayers to you and your family,

Jay

Dear Michael, it is so good to hear your voice again. Your words continue to flow beautifully from your brain. Our journey toward integration with nature is powerful! I continue to be challenged to live in a way that is "moving as one" with all that is...but our times certainly call for it. I also understand more that it is not about feeling guilty about our past unconscious expressions with nature...Instead I understand we are to love and have joy for ourselves and nature daily and fully. Jerry and I just returned from a trip out west and I got sick. So I continue to practice ...

I’m glad that you’re done with this round of radiation and hoping you get the clarity you need to move forward with your next stage of treatment. And what a great post reminding us all to be self-aware of our reactions. Somehow reading this today made sense as I passed a rare Brooklyn dragon fly. Sending you lots of love from Jeff and me.