Coming Home This Week Tuesday at 9a EDT and Thursday at Noon EDT

Join me for a bi-weekly weaving of our communal experience into a meditative journey

Dear Friends,

I made this mandala this morning in the cool fall air. I was struck by the fading patch of Amanita Muscaria mushrooms under my pine trees. They popped up overnight during the recent Sacred Heart retreat (which seemed coincidental and fortuitous) and now they’re melting…doing their job as composters; returning themselves and their nutrients to the ground.

But, the mushrooms were just the first decaying fascination I came across as I walked. The leaves were the most plentiful ambassadors of dissolution—portending, on the ground, the end of fall and the coming of winter. Some brilliant sumac, a cat tail, and some of the last wildflowers of the season: hearty clover. I felt myself grasping at color, at life, and then eventually…relaxing into the beauty and inevitability of decay.

What we contemplate is beyond us. I didn’t set out to make a mandala tribute to decay this morning…but, as I did it felt somehow like an appropriate prayer:

“Mother, please help us let go like the leaves,
melt like the mushrooms, 
ripen into brittle maturity like the sumac, 
shine with the light from warmer times 
like the late-season lavender, 
produce fruits abundantly like the pines,
and shed our old skins like the bittersweet.
Mother, please send your sweet hospicing of worn out things,
straight to the hearts of all those 
perpetuating tired stories of right and wrong.
Please help them let go of what has run its course. 
Help us find an end to the needless suffering.
Help us compost the hate...
And then, rest."

Join me tomorrow or Thursday for another Coming Home meditation where we share and listen for wisdom in each other’s stories. All are welcome.

This is a pay-what-you-feel experience each week. Suggested donation is $10-20 for drop ins. Whatever you feel called to give is wonderful and appreciated. Contributions can be made here: Paypal: schuyler@artofemergence.com or Venmo: ElizabethSchuyler-Brown. Paid subscribers, you are already covered. Thank you.