Mornings

Another backblip from the first UK4 retreat (see yesterday for details).  More morning images here (a quirk of Google Photos is that there is no provision for captions, a loss from Picasa, I feel.  If you want to see the captions you need to click on the i at the top right of each image.  GP is also slow to load, at least on my computer).

During the week I reconnected with the joy of mornings.  I have never been a morning person and had long had an idea of why this was so.  The retreat surfaced terror held in the cells of my body.  Met and melted in an early morning session with my now beloved teacher Lisa.  What a gift she is.  What a gaze she has.  What a lion heart.  She reminded me of  this image of the goddess Pele from her island home.  

It had taken such courage to get out of bed in my childhood home, such armouring does not readily leave a body, a soul.  But the crucible of this school, this community has begun to bring it into the open, into relationship, into healing.  I feel as though all of my experience - transcendent, traumatic and everything in-between - has found "a welcoming relational home " in Ridhwan and in this community which will meld over the coming years.  I thank our dear @Kendall  for the quoted phrase from Mark Epstein who she recommended yesterday, a deep bow of gratitude to both.

For myself I have been restored to the joy of the morning.

Morning in the burned house.