"Accept me, dear God, accept me for this while.

Let those orphaned days without you be forgotten.

Only spread this little moment wide across your lap,
holding it under your light.

I have wandered in puruit of voices that drew me,
but led me nowhere.

Now let me sit in peace and listen to your words in the soul of my silence.

Do not turn your face from my heart's dark secrets,
but burn them until they are alight with your fire."

Rabindranath Tagore

May we accept ourselves today with the LOVE with which God accepts us:
absolute and unconditional.

Anticipation can set the heart a-flutter.
It can cause blutterflies to take flight in our stomachs.
Anticipation prepares us to be awed.

It is easy to anticipate with an eager and expectant heart the great events in our lives.
The birth of a child. A new destination. A career change. Opening night at a show.

But how often to we anticipate with 'finger-on-lips' and eyes agog,
the small, ordinary but absolutely breath-taking daily events in our lives?
Consider a sun rise .. slow, rhythmical, inspiring.
Listen to the deep throated song of the tui, feasting on the camellia tree.
Fee lthe breath you just took ... enlivening, renewing, refreshing.

Today may we experience a delightful anticipation of everyday events
with new eyes and a receptive heart.

There are always times when we are vulnerable.

David Whyte speaks of the vulnerability of poets or artists or writers who decide to put their work, their art, in the public arena. Their souls lay bare to all.

Viruses and microbes can attack our immune systems and make us vulnerable to infection and disease.

The frailty and finiteness of the human condition mean we will encounter tragedy and sorrow in our lives.

It is important to  lay 'mulch' in our lives: that material or practice or companions who will help us to be fortified against spiritual, emotional, social and physical attack. This 'mulch' may suppress the unwanted, and incubate the nascent new growth. It will strengthen us.

May we find time today to lay 'mulch' in our lives ... to tend to our' hauroa', our well-being.