My tribe lovelies! It's been too long since I've connected with you. The last nine months of monastic life at Green Gulch Zen Center has kept me very quiet, busy and tired. I've been working my ass off in the kitchen and sitting my ass off in the zendo. Intensive self-study and living so closely with others has brought many joys and many sorrows. I so appreciate the dharma as a magnificent magnifying glass and know that I've changed and grown greatly in these months here.

But, no, serious monastic life is just not for me; I have absolutely no desire to become a Zen priest. Instead I long to sing and dance again! To dress up, drink wine, have a bedroom of my own, sleep in past 4:30am, work for a wage, maybe even date a good man once in awhile! (Ah, such a hedonist I am.)

My quest for spiritual resonance will continue, just not at Green Gulch. I'll be leaving here at the end of January with no destination and no plans. So, I reach out and am open to feedback, ideas, inspiration from you! Please let me know if you are aware of any interesting jobs or living situations. I'll probably want to stay in the Western U.S. (my family's still in Ashland and SF) but my mind is open.

Thank you! Many fat blessings for 2008!

In the century now dawning, spirituality, visionary consciousness, and the ability to build and mend human relationships will be more important for the fate and safety of this nation than our capacity to forcefully subdue an enemy. Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don't want.
- Marianne Williamson

This is what we are given:
soap and bees and dark tea,
coyotes calling on August nights,
milk and mist and the amazing nub
of a brown nipple that stands up
when it gets cold, the subtle smell
of earthworms tunneling soil, eating dirt.

This is enough
and still there is more.

Today I saw the black face
of a dog lean out of a truck window
to sniff the air, his pink tongue flapping
in the wind, and I knew he could taste the sun,
the snowmelt, the early gnats and pollens,
his nostrils swelling with the cool silver scent
of car bumpers, grocery bags filled
with sweet yellow peppers and deep red meat,
even the lushness of a single shoestring, mine,
dragged dwon damp streets and along ripe forest paths.

The dog even seemed satisfied,
his body pure contentment
beyond gratitude, which, like grief,
doesn't last.

I don't know where that black-faced dog
is now. But as the sun is smearing its white light
over us as it does every day, and tonight
the cold moon, as always, will turn
its blistered cheek toward us whether we see it
or not, and all of this is enough.