Year End Reflections & Call to Deepen Practice

With a grateful and tender heart, I offer these Year End Reflections & Call to Deepen Practice. ​ 

It is a softly sunlit Autumn morning in Boston. I'm sipping matcha in a Japanese tea hut in the backyard of dharma teacher friends Bill and Susan Morgan. I can feel the ripples of a winter breeze moving through the bare tree branches outside. This structure is much like the simple hermitage I called home for many years as a Zen monk. It is the contemplative cave-of-the-moment life has gifted amidst many temporary sanctuaries during this year as a nomad. 

Being without a home and being welcomed into other people’s spaces during all of 2025  has given Mark and me the immeasurable gifts of kindness, connectedness, and basic needs being met in a time of real insecurity. It’s also been challenging for a sensitive, earthy being like me to be perpetually uprooted and have to ground and reground again and again and again. I’ve lived a long distance from my comfort zone for 13 months now, alongside a full teaching schedule — continually packing and unpacking as we attend to the myriad details, questions, and complexities of rebuilding our lives.

This nomad life has also called forth in me even more fluidity, adaptability, and resiliency — wise qualities for all living beings to remember. It’s helped me to let go and surrender more devotedly to the awareness that is not bothered. This is what it looks like to meet all that arises in our lives as our practice opportunity. 

This year has deepened my attunement with the psychic/spiritual displacement so many beings are experiencing now, and my compassion towards the displaced parts of me. It has strengthened my recognition of emergence as the organizing principle of Gaia, and has affirmed that clear seeing is only possible through the lens of both/and. Had we not been catapulted from our home in North Carolina, I might not be meeting my appointments each day with as much radical presence, because I’m so clear that every meeting could be our last. I would not be here in Boston at this moment in time, with new and dear friends, fresh perspective, and inquiries. Mark and I would not be dreaming into a vision that had never occurred to us before for resettling in dharma community in 2026.

I take Refuge continually in the truth that every happening we ever experience arises and connects us to and through the intricate web of interdependence. Everything we ever experience contains the full spectrum of light and shadow, luminosity and complexity, peace and paradox.

The entirety of practice, from my perspective, is the spirit of Kindness/Service/Care that comes from remembering the radical gift and responsibility of interbeing. Growing up, my parents opened up their hearts and our humble home to homeless children from Skid Row in LA. They modeled service as the most important task in life. Guided by the kindness in their hearts, they made compromises and were willing to experience discomfort and work hard to eventually help thousands of people access the basic need for stable housing. 

Meeting reality — the sacred truth of our existence as it is — as a devotional practice, is where my heart lies. The heart of service is the entire point of meditation, and we include ourselves and the most unwanted parts of us in the circle of life we serve. 

I don't believe we need to "save the world." The world does not need our saving, nor the qualities of urgency and polarization that accompany that assumption. The world desperately needs our care.

Thank you to everyone who has shown up in the spirit of caring  and supported our slow and messy journey to recovery this year….and to everyone who has practiced with me this year — courageously, vulnerably, and joyfully. 

Thank you for meeting  with acceptance the many moving parts of my life — with Zoom cutting out unexpectedly, Time Zones mixed up more often, or long delays in email responses.

Thank you for meeting me with understanding and acceptance for the emergent living process of recovery from the most dramatic event of my life. Living processes need patience, respect, listening, and permission to move in ways that DO NOT often match the linear rhythm and expectation of the dominant paradigm. All life is an emergent living process. Our bodies are living processes. Our collective grief, trauma, and healing are a living process. The earth is a living process. 

Luckily, I long ago became bored with the fantasy of arrival, conclusion, or destination. I became tired of seeking the polish of perfection early on in practice, and presentation has never touched my appetite as deeply as authenticity and the divine messiness of reality. 

Here is my sacred rant and prayer as the year 2025 comes slowly to a close:

Alongside so many feeling powerless and choiceless, how can we let The Great Unravelling be an opportunity to unravel unkindness? How can we support each other to slow down, disarm, and remember how powerful we can be through presence, attunement, and care?

In order to remember this, we must recognize the spiritual bypassing that gets in the way of wholehearted practice. This spiritual bypassing includes:

• Chasing exotic experiences as a way to escape reality

• Holding spiritual practice as precious

• Using meditation as a self-improvement tool

• Sunshining… Trying to keep things “light”

• Trying to keep practice “pretty” and pleasant rather than embrace truth 

• Maintaining unconsciousness about our internal biases

• Grasping for conclusion, attainment, and transcendence

• Using meditation to seek an “island of peace” that feeds isolation rather than interconnection

• Not seeing the grave impact of capitalism on the cultures we create through practice 

• Not seeing the conditioned biases that keep us from real inclusivity

• Not owning our projections onto authority

• Putting meditation teachers — or anyone — into a box with a one dimensional label 

• Feeding the illusory “I” trying to perfect practice or be more mindful. (How exhausting!)

• And the list goes on…

I invite you to pause and consider, with non-judgment, What is your own current version of spiritual bypassing? And what support do you need to see bypass for what it really is —  a shiny distraction that pulls you away from the luminosity of who and what you really are.

I’m tired of people judging and policing each other, yes, even in the name of consciousness. I long for a world where we embrace the practice of community beyond the tribalism of shared beliefs or even shared forms of practice. I long for a time when trusting the wisdom and knowing of the 70 trillion cells of our earth bodies makes more sense to people than turning to artificial intelligence for “knowledge.” Every time we look “out there” to extract answers we disobey the direct transmission that speaks only the contemplative language of the heart.

As we meet the threshold of the new year 2026……

• Let’s be more forgiving and less judgemental.

• Let’s be more disarming and less antagonizing.

• Let’s embrace polarity and shadow more bravely.

• Let’s stop taking sides and spend more time resting in the fertile space in between.

• Let’s stay present just a little longer through those messy, awkward, uncomfortable moments that are actually portals to healing.

• Let’s savor the spiritual revolution of listening and attunement, remembering the mycelial network of relationship in every moment.

• Let’s ask questions - of ourselves and one another - with curiosity and wonder, without grasping conclusion.

• Let’s be willing to explore power dynamics together — with more kindness and less righteousness and finger-pointing.

• Let’s  s l o w  down enough to truly restore.

• Let’s celebrate our animal bodies through play, spontanaity, and the unscripted nature of eros.

• Let’s meet the mystery and the human experience of not knowing with a humble and reverent heart.

• Let’s pause more often to feel, sense, and recognize from our core… 

           THIS IS IT.

• Let’s dream a more creative and life-affirming dream together.

At the start of 2025 I saw this cartoon:

“Hi, I’d like to cancel my subscription to 2025. I’ve experienced the 14-day free trial and I’m definitely not interested. 

In retrospect, although humorous at the time, there was great truth to the comment!  And now we’ve made it to the end of 2025.  As we prepare to cross the threshold of 2026, I offer a Prayer at the end of the year, and I bow to Source… and the 5 elements that animate us.

Earth Element: Please ground us, help us sink roots more deeply into every lived moment, to know the stable nature of awareness as The Ground of Being. Help us to trust and respect the living earth that is our Home.

Fire Element:  Please inspire in us embodied passion and fierce compassion. Help us recognize the wisdom of the Sacred No alongside our Yes to life. Help us listen more deeply through the instrument of our earth body, and take authorship for our lives and our part of collective imagination.

Water Element: Please help us surrender to the fluidity and flow that is natural to our earth body, comprised of 90% water. Help us to rehydrate this world of bright hard edges, bright lights, and backlit screens, so our subtle body and soft tissue can relax. Help us restore the living waters of planet Earth.

Air Element: Please help us to recognize the space between our breath, the space between our thoughts, and the sacred space that is the mycelial network of relationships. 

Ethers: Please help us to respect the invisible realm and savor liminality and emptiness. Help us to listen to the invisible with more devotion and live in the reciprocity of listening and response, like a call and response in the orchestra of life.  Help us embrace - with love - the non-conclusive nature of Life. 

Thank you to all of my teachers…and all who practice with the Fierce Compassion Sangha. And thank you to my beloved Mark D’Aquila. 

For a preview of Residential Retreats in 2026, please click here.

Thank you to Jasmine for the beautiful artwork

Reflections On the Passing of a Great Teacher and Dear Friend, Joanna Macy

The Buddha taught that Friendship is not half of the holy life. It is the holy life. (Upaddha Sutta)

As we deeply listen through the emergence of accelerated change in our world, we often feel unclear about what specific actions to take to make impact. We forget that community-building is skillful action in itself. Community is the mycelial network of the visible and invisible relational field of interdependence. A friend reminded me recently that in nature, while the mycelial network is vibrant, alive, and constant, it is rare to see the appearance of the fruiting body. I believe there is power in nurturing our mycelial networks of support in this time… in a devoted and unrelenting way… trusting the act of coming together rather than grasping for action/result.

One of Joanna Macy’s gifts was the recognition that community-building is sacred activism in a world of disconnect. The first treasure Joanna gave me as a young person was the understanding that turning towards our pain—together, in community and in ritual—opens the portal to freedom from the trance of separation. She gave me permission to turn towards, rather than away from my pain at a time when I thought my pain was a weakness that might swallow me whole. The motion of turning towards began to fortify a spiritual agency I could not access alone, or when numbing out to any part of my lived experience.

Perhaps the deepest, most painful human experience is the experience of believing we are alone, of feeling alone through whatever we might be going through. Entangled in the illusion of isolation, we try to “hold it all together.” While this is understandable, it is when this effort is dissolved, that we can truly experience “holding it all together,” as in knowing Interbeing through our joy and grief. 

I first read World as Lover, World as Self by Joanna Macy when I started college, and felt ignited by its core message: We begin to see the world as belonging to us as intimate as our own bodies. In 1992, it had just recently been published and I was eagerly discovering the teachings of deep ecology, engaged Buddhism, and the seeds for a new (ancient) paradigm based on interdependence. This book deepened my inquiry into the embodiment of Interbeing, from the micro to the macro. The radical responsibility of Interbeing calls us to both show up to be of greater service, and to be available to receive support.

When I first met Joanna Macy in person at the age of 22, after graduating college, I was working for Helena Norberg Hodge, Swedish activist, at the nonprofit organization International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC), focused on biological and cultural diversity. ISEC was based on the Ladakh Project, which celebrated the holistic traditions of indigenous Buddhist cultures high in the Himalayas, living in partnership with nature, and we advocated for indigenous cultures across the globe. Helena was part of a group of inspiring people running the International Forum on Globalization, who were some of my new heroes taking a stand for compassionate action in our world and the protection of ancient ways of knowing. Joanna Macy was one of them. 

The first time I met her in person, Helena and I went to Joanna’s home for tea and cookies, and I remember feeling equally delighted, awkward, and intimidated. At the time, I tended to project all over teachers I most respected, before dropping into a more authentic way of relating with them. I had started guiding community education groups for ISEC, and also started working with The Work That Reconnects spiral. Every time I engaged in the work, something in my perception lens shifted—and I felt more connected to myself, ancestors, people I would never meet across the globe, and the more-than-human world. Joanna’s work affirmed a portal bridging the inner and outer work, and this has been the foundation of my practice and teaching since. 

While my own path called me to pause in activist work at the age of 26 in order to move to a Zen Buddhist monastery to train in a more supportive, distilled, and radical spiritual community, The Work That Reconnects was always with me. When I exited the monastery 7 1/2 years later, I reconnected with Joanna and attended her facilitator training in Ojai, California. Soon, she invited me to assist her with a workshop and, on the long drive home afterwards, we dropped into a conversation I'll never forget. I opened myself to knowing Joanna more deeply and letting her know me more deeply.

That time in my life, post-monasticism, was a deeply creative, visionary, and pioneering time. It was also uncomfortable and scary, as I navigated coming into my own expression as an engaged Buddhist teacher in a world of so much complexity. I saw unique qualities in Joanna that felt outside-the-box in formal Buddhism. I saw a fierce tenacity, playfulness, and expressiveness alongside a humble heart, a vibrant recognition of the power of imagination and poetry alongside stillness, and an immeasurable warmth and generosity in her embodiment of community.  

Our relationship deepened when Joanna invited me to support her through a particularly hard time. I had internally blocked this kind of reciprocity with some of my own teachers, and witnessing Joanna avail herself to support from a mentee in this way made a huge impact on me. One of the topics we explored during that time was the gift of failure, and this topic, which seemed so taboo in our culture, was immeasurably transformative and healing for me.

One only needs to glimpse online to see how widespread Joanna’s work is globally to know that this was an extraordinary woman. Her work inspired thousands of us. Those of us who knew her personally knew that beyond her accomplishments, just the quality of presence, authenticity, and zest that she showed up with day in and day out was revolutionary. She was not just an extraordinary leader, but was also willing to show up constantly in child-like wonder. It felt that she was on the same page with all of us, an equal explorer, student, and discoverer, as she simultaneously guided us. She recognized awe as a true expression of shared power — and modeled looking through the lens of beginner's mind and seeing with new eyes.

In the aftermath of losing her, I will miss Joanna greatly. I have a lot to sit with, as do all of her disciples, about what is called for and required of us in these times. Her teachings and memory will always point me to the power of community and turning towards, rather than away, together. 

I had a visit scheduled with Joanna the week after she died, a yearly visit that I had been deeply looking forward to. In the last conversation we had prior, she had spoken of how much excitement, curiosity, and awe she held about her own moving towards death. She recognized Death as yet another sacred threshold. Joanna truly lived in gratitude for every moment, including gratitude for the final crossing her spirit would take in this lifetime.

Thank you, Joanna, for being a great teacher to so many of us and for taking a seat in the ancestral throne of shared power in our world. I believe the need for Joanna’s teachings and The Work That Reconnects has never been more potent, and I bow in appreciation to everyone who is helping to carry out this work.

On August 23, 2025, Purpose Guides is hosting Remembering Joanna Gathering, an invitation to celebrate Joanna Macy online. This event is also a fundraiser to support Joanna’s legacy and the Work That Reconnects. Mindful Living Revolution is honored to be one of the chosen organizations to be a beneficiary of this fundraiser! All are welcome!

Lastly, I want to acknowledge and express my endless appreciation to Anne Symens-Boucher, an extraordinary woman, foundational to the Work That Reconnects movement, who was also Joanna’s long-term executive assistant. Over the years of knowing Joanna, I have learned so much from Anne (co-founder of Canticle Farm) and her embodiment of Community, Sacred Activism, and True Service.

The Beauty Inherent in Repair

At our recent retreat, Return to Source, nestled in the snowcapped mountains of Colorado, a 19th Century black and gold Japanese kintsugi tea bowl sat upon our altar. Kintsugi is a Japanese art form featuring broken pottery and translates to "golden repair.”  Kintsugi invites us to embrace imperfection and recognize the beauty inherent in repair. Each day on retreat when I bowed slowly to the altar, thanking it for holding our community’s stillness, grief, love, and despair, I acknowledged the significance of the cracked bowl in my everyday life… 8 months after Hurricane Helene cracked my world and changed it forever.

I made it through a near death experience. I lived! Ever so slowly, step by step and with patience for processes that cannot be hurried, my husband and I are rebuilding our lives. Not everyone is given the opportunity of rebuilding after experiencing such devastation. But the crack nevertheless extends throughout  every aspect of our existence. In praise to one of my favorite songwriters, Leonard Cohen, “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. This is how the light gets in.”

Cracks in my once reliable schedule continually surprise me as I travel from place to place as a nomad -- juggling time zones. Cracks arise in the internet connection of temporary offices I set up along the way. Administrative cracks from mail that was oddly sent to an old address leads to an overdue notice. On the material level, any items I found in the rubble of my home are each cracked in their own way. 

Spirit has a great sense of humor. My boot and jacket zippers haven’t zipped properly since the hurricane. My laptop breaks down once a month mysteriously. My teeth have become more crooked and there remain mud stains on the surface of a backpack I found in the debris of my home and use daily. 

These cracks are symbols of the holes in our lives as we have known it. The holes in the ground we - personally and collectively - once perceived as solid. The holes in systems that are unravelling. The holes in ways and customs the US perceived as fixed. The unconditionally cracked nature of our world collectively is being revealed ever more rapidly through The Great Unravelling. 

To the untrained eye, this could be perceived as scary and alarming. But Buddhism teaches that this is our path… following the cracks. Each sacred crack is a teacher, inviting us into a deeper truth.

Meditation reveals to us that Reality is cracked. Ever changing and interdependent. Nothing is fixed nor finished. Light does not exist without shadow. Recognizing this, we see in each crack both emptiness and all possibility. We see our agency to respond to each moment free of a conditioned script. We see each crack - our vulnerability, our fragility, our weakness, our longing, our incongruencies, our paradoxes, our polarities, our messiness, our shadows - as holes invoking healing. It’s not about filling the holes. It’s not about getting to a fixed, enlightened, polished, untarnished destination. It’s about opening our hearts to the space between. It’s about leaning into and meeting each crack with love, being the liquid gold that coats the kintsugi bowl. 

Practice invites us to be continually tenderized and made soft in the face of what is hard, to know ourselves undeniably as the wholeness that is nondual and leaves no part out. Our cracks are portals affirming wholeness, rather than proof that we are lacking.

For me, It’s uncomfortable right now. I’m exhausted and need to rest more often than before. I pack, unpack, and misplace things too often. There are so many aspects of the process of recovering from a climate event that require waiting… and waiting longer. And I am one of the lucky ones, supported by privilege and community in my recovery. 

But deep inside, I love the discomfort of the cracked bowl. It’s a wildly and vibrantly alive place. I love the reminder to embrace messiness more than ever and not take myself seriously or personally. I love arriving to teach on Zoom in the same clothes I did the week before. I love the questions that replace clarity more and more often, directing me to slow down and spend even more time in not knowing. I love the awkwardness and discomfort of the cracks within conversation or conflict… Just hanging out in the middle of fecund unknown together, being with the messiness of misaligned or divergent perspectives - rather than seeking the boring route of conclusion, finish line, or me versus you.

Meditation is a practice of emptying. As our fixed ideas of self and collective crack open, there is more space for seeing with the heart. 

Like the kintsugi bowl, these times invite us to see - with renewed clarity - the beauty in our despair and the opportunity in repair. Everything is broken. Can we let go of superficial concerns or made up standards of perfection and become intimate with reality as it is, together? Can we let go of presentation, polish, or trying to appear a certain way and just be raw and real together? Can we give ourselves to the art of repair together? 

This requires showing up empty, open, real, and cracked. This requires letting go of crutches we’ve used to try to hide the cracks, or used to hold on to the false comfort of relative world orientation. Beyond feeding stories of separation, distance, or self-consciousness… beyond the habit of brushing our hair to appear on Zoom… or planning what we are going to say… beyond hiding our age or our weaknesses… beyond continuing to believe the capitalistic notion that we are not enough… we could conserve endless energy and resources by just showing up as we are. The energy that gets freed up in this way of being can then fuel our generosity of service to others.

Let’s revel in the process of what we might create through a culture that celebrates the art of repair. Let's awaken through our longing to be real and embrace messiness... To be seen and see one another as we actually are…cracked and whole simultaeously. Embracing our collective shadow requires that we embrace our personal shadows. If we block or numb out the shadows we cannot hear the call to respond. Let’s melt into all that is broken like gold in the cracks of the broken tea bowl… willing to bring all of life’s broken pieces into radical wholeness.