Kate Brenton
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Words

I've scribbled the alphabet for meaning since I can remember.

New Moon Musings

5/27/2017

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Picture

“Change rooms in your mind for a day.”  - Hafiz


I attended a circle a few nights ago that was centered on connectivity and relating in a concrete format — meaning it had a system and was a bit formalized. It was my first experience.

One deep gem that I walked home with I’m going to share with you here -  a bit paraphrased & rewritten to capture the essence of the moment without reiterating the minutia:

A man in the circle decidedly sat hands splayed, in a gesture of openness. The group asked him questions about his feeling state, he answered.

At one point a woman commented: “I noticed that your hands began splayed open, and then depending on what we were talking about sometimes they curled closed, and right now they are open, but also kinda closed — and I would say they seem to be in a gesture of connection, to your self.”

His hands were loosely in jnana mudra — effortlessly.

I have also noticed, when I sit down into a yoga or a mindfulness practice, I have to invite myself to sit back a little to get my sits bones on the mat. I just did it again as I typed that sentence; relax back. I have begun to notice that I often lean forward, sitting just a bit before the moment. 

On the drive home from the circle, and into the next morning I really thought about that correlation - open and connected, not splayed out unstable and uncertain - whether in posture or in mindset.  That is the space of new horizons, and easier compassion, rooted in the self - but open to the moment, occupying both the downwardness of rooting and the openness of a heart horizontal — the expanse of the day and the life that we have created. 

So much more is available, it feels, when we sit back and relax into It.

Happy New Moon + Have a Great Holiday Weekend,
Kate
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Sunshine, Death + Mary Oliver

5/17/2017

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I recently let go of something (does it matter if it is a person, place or thing?), and I was - in Kate fashion - getting ready to explain the depths of what had happened, when over coffee on a very bright, and sunny Tuesday my girlfriend shrugs, “It died a natural death.”

My mouth gapes. “That is exactly what happened,” I realize.

“Yeah, I know I just figured that one out myself. It just died a natural death. It’s over.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah. A natural death. Saying ‘natural’ is the most important part,” she shifts her shoulders to demonstrate.

“It is,” I squeal, confirming my perplexed awe at the simple truth.  “It happens all the time in Nature.”

“Yeah, it happens all the time everywhere. It returns. And something new is born - eventually.”

“Yeah.” I am pretty sure my face is still squinting at the simplicity - because it is true. I was hunting for a story - I now realize - and had been practicing the arc line when I was telling it to others in order to justify it to myself,  but the truth - the truth is : it died a natural death. 

It was time to let go.
End of story.

Let it go.

Happy Wednesday, 
Kate
In Blackwater Woods
by Mary Oliver
​

Look, the trees
are turning 
their own bodies 
into pillars

of light, 
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything 
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
lends back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation, 
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it; 
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
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